Oh, sarcasm, how I can never detect you...
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Left leaning anti-scientific beliefs
- Thread starter Opiate
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Oh, sarcasm, how I can never detect you...
the fuck?
I couldn't even make it through your entire post. I had to stop before I died of laughter. Which you may approve of since I'm a geneticist and am likely part of your problem.
Edit: Oh wait, the ending is the best part! Let the free market decide! By mandating regulations and labels! Hahaha
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Who cares if something is "natural" or not? In the end, the result is that the target DNA is modified. And I hope you aren't suggesting that something is better if it's "natural".
It's like people using the word "chemicals" like it means anything. A molecule is either harmful or it's not, whether it's found naturally in a plant or animal or synthesized in a lab.
Having to pay more for
eggs because of liberals in California :/
Relevant story. Assuming they don't cross breed I don't see the problem with this. Proposal to use GMO mosquitoes in Florida to kill off mosquitoes carrying harmful viruses
everything
Relevant story. Assuming they don't cross breed I don't see the problem with this. Proposal to use GMO mosquitoes in Florida to kill off mosquitoes carrying harmful viruses
This is like how people automatically think organic is better and pesticide free. The natural pesticides used on organic farms can be even worse than the sythensized alternatives.
Tesseract
Banned
yeah, this one is gonna be a problem for a while.
IsntChrisL
Member
Pretty much anything organic-only, gluten free diet, non-GMO related is usually practiced by someone on the left.
I wasn't aware the anti-vaccine movement leaned left but I do find it interesting. It makes sense given the crowd listed above though.
I wasn't aware the anti-vaccine movement leaned left but I do find it interesting. It makes sense given the crowd listed above though.
Interceptor
Banned
Easily homeopathy. ^^ On my phone right now but read about it. It's hilarious.
So tell me, which GMO crop out there at the moment would grow, self sustain and reproduce, without the use a pestizide and herbicide at the moment.
So lying to the costumer is the solution, you don't have to know, if it is a GMO product or not, because reasons. As a costumer I usually can decide not to buy a product of a certain company, because I don't like them or don't share their politics. But in the case of GMO I am not even allowed to know, because you know, reasons.
What the hell are you even saying, according to FAO, World Bank and a whole lot of other organizations pesticide use is much lower with GMO than with traditional farming.
I want to know if whoever picked my apples is a Saggitarius because i don't trust them.
DOWN
Banned
I'm confused by what you are suggesting. What's the point of modifying stuff like soy beans to resist insects by using natural insecticide producing genes, if the plants can't grow without insecticides? Why would they be modifying them to have natural pesticides if unmodified versions were growing fine without those genes? The whole point of many GMOs is that they don't have to rely on pesticides, which normal crops inconsistently suffer from pest attacks over their lack of genetically supported resistances.
And you are saying that GMOs should be labeled just because, except with a fearfully do accusatory tone unsupported by science that has allowed GMOs to serve the demands for certain crops. There's more suggestion and lying in labeling GMOs right now than in not mandating the label, since there's actual science that has supported the arguments for not mandating more labeling. Labels that are unnecessary and misunderstood (by people like you) are not beneficial. There's no science to suggest you are even remotely on point saying people should see those labels because there is abundant science proving the lack of difference in GMO products and the effects on consumers.
There is a strong reaction against genetically modified plants, yet almost zero opposition to generally modified plants - I.e modified through cross breeding. Yet surely you can introduce undesirable side effects into nature using traditional methods just fine.
I don't really understand the difference in reaction between the two, although I will admit to being wary of GMO. Maybe it's just down to the potential speed and magnitude of change,mcomoared to traditional which may take years to develop a new variety, giving you time to monitor behaviour?
more like denying the weight of complications of circumcision in low risk countries
Traditional framing is not large industrial monocultures. Of course GMO is better in the envoirment of the worst imaginable version of farming. And please, World Bank is about the worst source you could ever pick.
So I should not be able to decide, that the product I buy is supporting Monsanto. I can decide, that I will not buy a Nestle product, because I don't like their policy. But the same thing I not allowed to do, because of reasons for GMO food.
But than again, I should not expect too much from a country with state legislation banning people from even showing, how their meat is produced. Because people knowing about animal abuse is also not their buisness.
DOWN
Banned
But the industry and government need to ask why you should know these things and what the public mentality approaching that knowledge is. You don't need to know how the pig was killed because in reality, you know it was killed in a factory for a product you keep asking for. If you must know more, that because of your own preferences and not a public interest in safety. You don't need to demand farmers reveal Monsanto seeds because the crop is safe and in demand. Why would you stick alerting labels on a product for no supported reason when it just makes people like you spout off false info to stop buying it?
.
And Nestle is a bad comparison. They don't tell you their suppliers. A farm doesn't have to tell you the origin of their seed when there's no scientific reason to. They deliver the produce and that is their brand. That's as close as they get to the equally mysterious Nestle.
So why should the public not even now, if the pig they were eating is either produced in an clean still industrial evoirment like this
or rather like this
and you don't want to see the low end.
or if your chicken is produced like this
or more like this
or maybe even like this
So I will not buy a Nestle product, because I don't want to support Nestle. But why should I also not be allowed to not buy a GMO product, because I don't want to support Monsanto or Syngeta. Why would that be a bad thing?
DOWN
Banned
MidgarBlowedUp
Member
I'm not worried about eating gmo foods, I'm concerned about the effects on the environment, and the effects of these gmo foods being completely controlled and manufactured by a single entity. I would fully expect a corporation that lobbies big government to skimp on testing for, as an example, the introduction of an allergen into a food or crop. I'd also be concerned about the reduction in genetic diversity due to mass production and contamination.
And fyi, when I say natural, I'm talking about whether the end product is from synthetic engineering or not. An example of synthetic gene manipulation would be hgh.
I'm not against gmo foods, I just think we should be cautious about what we feed the environment.
As I understand it the reason for not labeling gmo foods is because once that food is deemed equivalent to non gmo foods by the fda it serves no purpose to label it that way.
Didn't mean to fire up hostility in the thread.
I guess many people view cross breeding as natural, while GMOs aren't.
Of course this is essentially false, but what can you do.
Why should they? What does it matter if they're raised like your first image (which has much fewer pigs making it an odd image to use) over your second image?
CheDominik
Member
You don't think it's good for consumers to know exactly where their food comes from?
It's an EU law that eggs/meat/dairy products have an unique ID/QR-code that you can use to track everything.
I don't see the downside for consumers.
What would the benefit be?
DOWN
Banned
It's not a good idea if it means consumers who are misinformed or fearful begin to speak against or avoid certain labels that were mandated with no evidence to contradict the conclusive safety studies on them.
Come on now, you know Gluten Free labeling led hundreds of thousands to adopt it in their diet with the misconception that gluten must be bad. The average consumer is not in need of labels like that which suggest they need to be warned when science shows they don't.
CheDominik
Member
Let's say there is another food scandal, where unsafe meat has been used or some disease could be spread by eating said meat. You know if the product you bought is safe.
Or if you want to buy local and don't want your meat to come from New Zealand, or you have ethical problems when it comes to factory farming.
More labeling is always better, because my interests as a consumer are more important than corporate interests, and I for one am happy that the EU at least partly agrees with me.
edit:
I don't think it's the conumers job to blindly trust said corporations/studies when it comes to GMOs. Let me make my own decision, even if it hurts your bottom line.
DOWN
Banned
Uh except I just posted about gluten because it is an infamous example of consumers fearing and avoiding an ingredient due to labeling
So if you put GMO free, people will avoid GMOs, but then you would ask why and the answer would be something derivative of "just because" and "natural" and overall contrary to the best information known for the sake of fearing and instead following people's unsupported warnings. The best info is good in some cases, but then people just seem to abandon it when it comes to food and say science is no longer a trustworthy practice. Diet Coke is made by capitalist Devils, etc.
What about ground meat? It's really interesting that the EU does this.
DOWN
Banned
But the corporations don't get to just toss whatever they want at the market. And over all these decades, there's been testing well beyond the interests and reach of corporations that's done nothing to suggest the corporations misled on safety. Yet you want to see a label that you seem to distrust and fear enough to avoid, and you can easily imagine how many people will have little understanding of the science to know that the labels were demanded by people who didn't look at studies, even though the studies support the safety of the product.
You aren't being consistent here. Consumers blindly trust labeling, even at a cost to them. It's happening now with gluten and "all natural" which is a term not even regulated by the FDA.
CheDominik
Member
Gluten free as far as I know is not a mandated label, it's just a marketing strategy to sell stuff. And don't people with celiac have the right to now if something is safe to eat? Same for lactose intolerant people. I don't see the problem here.
If the options are extensive(maybe even excessive) labeling and possible obfuscation, I don't think the choice is too hard to make.
CheDominik
Member
Ground meat if bought fresh falls under the same rules, the problem is that processed food does not. So that lead to the horse meat scandals, but they are working on a label similar to what we already have with eggs, where you have the country of origin, the producer and the method of production(free range).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_marking
btw. This obligatory marking lead consumers to reject battery cage eggs. I don't know a single supermarket that still sells them here. And free range eggs sell by far the most in one of the largest supermarket chains(I think the same holds true for others in Germany).
Battery cage eggs are perfectly safe, but nobody wants to buy them, is this fear mongering as well?
There's a distinction between labeling where a product came from and labeling whether it's GMO or not. There's also a distinction between a label that says "Comes from Smith's Farm!" on the front and a QRC code that someone can look up online to know more.
All of these details matter, because we're talking about framing information for people. Pretty clearly, signs on the front of boxes that say "Gluten Free!" haven some negative consequences, so we need to be careful how we frame information.
All of these details matter, because we're talking about framing information for people. Pretty clearly, signs on the front of boxes that say "Gluten Free!" haven some negative consequences, so we need to be careful how we frame information.
Right, I don't think people are suggesting that there aren't benefits to gluten free labels, just that they have clear negative consequences too. Changing how things are labeled might drastically effect people's behavior.
We'd probably see very different outcomes from these three situations:
1) A big red label on the front which says "Warning: contains gluten"
2) A small label on the back of the box which says "contains gluten"
3) A QRC code on the back of a box which, when looked at online, contains a variety of information, including whether the product has gluten
In theory, all of these labels provide the same information for a consumer. In reality, we've found that people respond very differently to all of these, even if technically they represent the same thing.
What about information overload? Credit Cards in the US are an example of this: people were signing up for bad credit cards in the US not because there was too little information, but because there was so much that people couldn't figure out what mattered and what didn't. Recent legislation forced credit card companies to simplify and remove information so that people could better understand what mattered and what didn't.
You have to make sure you aren't providing too much information, as well. The human brain has a finite capacity.
DoktorEvil
Banned
Is it wrong to say that I couldn't care how animals are raised for human consumption?
I mainly don't want there to be issues like there was reading The Jungle and hearing about public health violations and unsanitary methods in meatpacking.
If there was conclusive evidence to say that raising animals one way vs another would result in a better cut of meat, I'd be all for supporting legislation that protected meat quality standards, but as for catching feelings over animals, any animals in fact, I do not. I'd prefer efficient methods that do not compromise food quality.
I mainly don't want there to be issues like there was reading The Jungle and hearing about public health violations and unsanitary methods in meatpacking.
If there was conclusive evidence to say that raising animals one way vs another would result in a better cut of meat, I'd be all for supporting legislation that protected meat quality standards, but as for catching feelings over animals, any animals in fact, I do not. I'd prefer efficient methods that do not compromise food quality.
Well at least you're honest about being massively selfish and greedy and think that animal abuse is acceptable. I wish more people were as honest as that so I could avoid them.
DoktorEvil
Banned
Good. I don't want to bother with people who hold animals above humans. Or give animals more rights that humans.
CheDominik
Member
I actually agree with your first point, every label has to be the same size and it should be legislated. It can't be that producers of GMO/gluten free food exploit the lack of knowledge on certain topics for their own benefit with cigarette like warning labels.
Information overload is a thing, but you can stop that if every label means something and is legistlated in meaning and size.
That's one of the reasons the EU banned health-claims that are not 100% certain. One infamous example is Danone's Actimel(or DanActive) that claimed it supports the immune system.
And honestly I'm not getting the comparison between credit and groceries.
Well, humans are animals.
Do other animals have more rights than humans?
I think generally people just want animals that are bred for slaughter to be treated with some semblance of dignity.
But, hey, as long as you get to stuff your face, who cares about that?
I don't agree: all labels should not be the same size. Some information is more important than other information and that should be conveyed through label size and positioning.
Can you explain why that would solve the problem? If there are hundreds of labels that all "mean something," then surely that would produce information overload?
It's an excellent example of information overload. Providing information to a consumer seems, at first glance, like an inherently good thing; credit card applications (pre-regulation) show that it is not. It is often beneficial to give the consumer less information to avoid confusion.
CheDominik
Member
1. I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I meant that every gluten/GMO/whatever free label on Product A has to be the same size on Product B.
2. If we heavily legislate the amount/content of labels, we can prevent information overload. If the food industry isn't allowed to print meaningless labels like "all natural" or "improves your immune system" anymore the consumer is certain that it's an important piece of information that may or may not apply to them.
3.But what is the downside? I mean I can end up in massive debt if I choose a wrong credit card, but I don't think I miss out on much if I don't buy GMO corn.
DoktorEvil
Banned
Yes, a very vocal minority.
Like I said before, show me the receipts that it can provide a better cut and I'll support it.
Otherwise, I find it to be a waste of resources & in humane if animals are being treated like pets, raised in that manner, then led to slaughter.
fixedpoint
Member
Are you suggesting that it's inhumane to treat livestock humanely? If so, your username seems appropriate.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/08/how-animal-welfare-leads-to-better-meat-a-lesson-from-spain/244127/
DoktorEvil
Banned
I'll be a broken record and repeat: I'll support better conditions if it leads to better meat and better cuts.
From your article:
The profit loss and loss of product I find agreement with.
So the sentiment is that it doesn't pay to introduce/amend meatpacking standards if consumers can't taste the difference? Does that mean standard among consumers are dubious or that consumer do not care about the end result since they can season it to their liking?
My question is are meatpacking standards and large scale industrial farming as bad as this:
The Jungle said:
fixedpoint
Member
(I will admit to joining this thread late, apologies if I've derailed)
While industrial faming in the US leaves quite a bit to be desired, the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 was passed in part as a response to the publication of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Meat_Inspection_Act
There is a difference between treating them like pets or with some dignity. Killing ducks for food with pitchforks is not just unsanitary, it is also cruel and shows how some people working in this industry lack basic human characteristics.
And yes, it makes a difference how you slaughter the lifestock, for example not driving them for thounds of miles before that and reducing the stress level as much as possiblem, Some people even insist, that the meat taste way better because of this, less stress hormones make the meat better.
DoktorEvil
Banned
Yes I understand this, which also introduced the expansion of the USDA and introducing letter grades for cuts.
Are there any pervasive issues of this magnitude around today? If so, I'd support legislation that protected animals and laborers in this manner.
Because:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poultry_Products_Inspection_Act_of_1957
It took a long time to get fowl inspected the same as meat.
Would you say the same with hunters who used rudimentary tools to hunt?
And how does that trickle down to the average consumer? Is the average consumer going to pay the premium for meat that was handled in that manner vs paying for the lowest cut possible?
Simply Sarah
Member
Ah, The Jungle. Intended as a book to show the awful treatment of workers in industry but all people really cared about was their own food.
"I aimed at the publics heart and by accident hit its stomach."
Wow it has been a long time since I last posted, anyways a discussion on GMO's certainly warrants a response.
I see these debates fairly regularly and it almost always boils down to the same two positions, that GMO's are good, and GMO's are bad.
Put simply the fight is happening in the wrong place.
GMO's are not a single entity with universal characters. They are a product of a technology. Now if there was evidence that the technology itself somehow imparted a particular set of features onto the organism being modified that was harmful (either to consumers or the environment) then a discussion on the harmful effects of GMO's would be warranted. As it stands no such harmful effect has been identified as a innate side effect of the process of modifying an Organism with this technology.
Now each particular GMO has the possibility of having an adverse effect on either the consumer or the environment; a result of the particular set of new features applied to that organism, and as such needs to be tested, and deemed safe. If a particular GMO is found to be harmful, that does not indict the entire process; only the particular organism.
Labeling for GMO's is missing the mark not because there is no risk in consuming a GMO, but because it lumps all GMO's together and calls them the same thing when many of them are better both for the consumer and the environment then the unmodified varieties.
Now that does not mean that all GMO's get a free pass either. Where the technology itself is safe (there is nothing inherent to the technology that produces ill effect as far as we can tell) a particular GMO may end up being unsafe, not as a result of the process, but as a result of the particular features that were transferred to the organism.
Nobody would want to eat a tomato that was given the trait of producing lethal levels of Arsenic after all. That is a GMO. However a GMO that produces a natural pesticide (albeit from a different organism) that effectively reduces the need for costly, dangerous and environmentally unfriendly pesticides for that crop would be a great benefit.
My point, as it were, is that each GMO must be judged as an individual, should be tested as an individual, and should be adopted or discarded as an individual.
I see these debates fairly regularly and it almost always boils down to the same two positions, that GMO's are good, and GMO's are bad.
Put simply the fight is happening in the wrong place.
GMO's are not a single entity with universal characters. They are a product of a technology. Now if there was evidence that the technology itself somehow imparted a particular set of features onto the organism being modified that was harmful (either to consumers or the environment) then a discussion on the harmful effects of GMO's would be warranted. As it stands no such harmful effect has been identified as a innate side effect of the process of modifying an Organism with this technology.
Now each particular GMO has the possibility of having an adverse effect on either the consumer or the environment; a result of the particular set of new features applied to that organism, and as such needs to be tested, and deemed safe. If a particular GMO is found to be harmful, that does not indict the entire process; only the particular organism.
Labeling for GMO's is missing the mark not because there is no risk in consuming a GMO, but because it lumps all GMO's together and calls them the same thing when many of them are better both for the consumer and the environment then the unmodified varieties.
Now that does not mean that all GMO's get a free pass either. Where the technology itself is safe (there is nothing inherent to the technology that produces ill effect as far as we can tell) a particular GMO may end up being unsafe, not as a result of the process, but as a result of the particular features that were transferred to the organism.
Nobody would want to eat a tomato that was given the trait of producing lethal levels of Arsenic after all. That is a GMO. However a GMO that produces a natural pesticide (albeit from a different organism) that effectively reduces the need for costly, dangerous and environmentally unfriendly pesticides for that crop would be a great benefit.
My point, as it were, is that each GMO must be judged as an individual, should be tested as an individual, and should be adopted or discarded as an individual.
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