
I Run a GMO Company and Support GMO Labeling - myw01
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/opinion/i-run-a-gmo-company-and-i-support-gmo-labeling.html
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dikdik
I've been preaching this sentiment for a few years, it's always fun to sign
those petitions in the grocery store while telling the petitioner they are way
off base on GMO's being "dangerous" (it's like saying the internet should be
shutdown because someone could steal your credit card information.)

I really believe any products coming from large scale farms should be labeled
with their strain, growing technique, pesticides used, and what farm it came
from. I do think labeling GMO's will have the opposite effect as most pro-
label people believe. Once people realize most of their food has had GMO's in
it for years and to eat all non-GMO will cost them double or triple, they will
all simmer down.

However, "GMO" itself is still a murky term. We genetically engineered all
sorts of crops before we could easily manipulate DNA at a molecular level. For
example, ruby red grapefruit was engineered by planting earlier cultivars
around a radioactive pole to induce widespread mutations (and thus new
varieties).

~~~
sspiff
Or sweet, orange carrots: they were originally purple and bitter and had a
woody core, but were selectively bred to reduce bitterness in Persia.

Centuries later, they were selectively bred to be orange by Dutch royalists
(in support of the royal House of Orange).

~~~
jdimov10
Does selective breeding count as GMO?

~~~
patall
Some "fun" facts on that: \- applying massive radiation (on plants) to
increase the mutation rate does not count as GMO \- modern Gene Editing like
TALEN (and probably CRISPR soon) are currently being interpreted as non-GMO by
the regulators

~~~
dikdik
I believe you are correct here, however, I do not think there is much of a
difference in the end result. The popular phrase is that past techniques
(radiation, selective breeding) are like taking a hammer to a genome, whereas
new techniques are like taking a scalpel to a genome.

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kriro
"GMO-haters" are often blatantly ignoring science. However I fully agree that
labeling is a pretty good idea. Transparency is good, a quick-facts box, a GMO
stamp of sorts and a QR-code that links to a dedicated website with super
detailed information (even linking to relevant papers) would be ideal. The
more transparent GMOs are the better. It seems there is quite a lot of FUD by
anti-GMO people.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think GMO companies default to being good people.
Some spend decent chunks of money on lobby work which always has me worried
and some are entangled in somewhat questionable science funding but by and
large I think there's way too much blind hatred for GMOs in general (or my
media perception is quite distorted which could also be true)

The author of the article has it pretty right imo

~~~
smackay
Most of the hate for GMOs are rooted in politics - the science often has
little to do with it. Monsanto's business practices and their early attempts
to create complete lock-in for farmers along with trying to get the EU to
force GMOs on consumers drives a lot of the fear and anguish.

As a far as the science is concerned there is plenty of fearmongering but
again this drives the political debate. As a counter example look at the hype
over CRISPR - nobody is up in arms about the possibilities for curing cancer
although the chances of things going wrong for early trials in people are
probably higher and the outcome rather more ghastly.

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dangoor
I appreciate the sentiment behind this article because to me not all GMO goods
are the same. For example, if a given ingredient is GMO to be Roundup ready,
I'm not keen to support that[1]. For others, maybe there isn't enough data to
know if the food produced is not harmful to us... in the US, the regulators
are balancing the needs of the businesses and the needs of the consumers, and
sometimes that balance is tilted toward letting the business get its goods out
even in the face of uncertainty.

Compounding all of this is the crazy complexity of nutrition research which
makes it difficult to assess the long term impact of anything we eat on our
health.

In short, I tend to eat organic not because I think GMOs are intrinsically
bad, but because they raise questions about the pesticides used and the track
record of the given ingredient. "GMO" by itself doesn't tell me if something
is good or bad.

[1]:
[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/150422-glyphosate...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/150422-glyphosate-
roundup-herbicide-weeds/)

~~~
michael_h
I tend to eat _some_ organic because I want tomatoes that taste like tomatoes.

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SturgeonsLaw
Absolutely! GMO products have many benefits, and they should be sold to the
public on those benefits.

Yes, there is a lot of pseudoscientific misinformation out there, but the
solution to that is to educate people on the facts, not to deceive them into
becoming unwitting customers by withholding information.

~~~
danielbarla
Sure. The article also goes along the line of "let's label things as a great
way to build trust with consumers", and that's obviously a good thing.

Though I wonder if the asymmetrical requirements for this type of labelling is
overall a good thing. Consumers will instinctively treat it as a warning
message. Along similar lines, is it a good thing that medicines are strictly
regulated and labelled? Definitely. Is it a good thing that unproven and
scientifically highly implausible "cures" get placed on the same shelves, sans
warnings? I'm not so sure. We shouldn't be creating market opportunities for
lesser technologies aimed at an uniformed public.

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patrickmay
There is a voluntary solution -- follow the Underwriters' Labs model. The non-
GMO (by whatever definition) suppliers should create or support an
organization that provides a label for those suppliers that meet the non-GMO
criteria. Consumers can choose to buy only food with that label. Misuse of the
label will land an infringer in court.

Simple, straightforward, and not subject to politics.

~~~
oliv__
I believe this exists already: it's called the Non GMO project [1]

[1] [http://www.nongmoproject.org/](http://www.nongmoproject.org/)

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greggman
I don't know what the right answer is but...

People say transparency is good and more info is good. Well to play devil's
advocate it seems pretty obvious labeling the race of the people making the
product so consumers can choose not to buy products made my a certain race of
people would be bad. In other words it seems it's not true that all
transparency and information is good.

In this case I tend to believe labelling will mostly be used for ignorance not
info

~~~
forgetsusername
> _it seems pretty obvious labeling the race of the people making the product
> so consumers can choose not to buy products made my a certain race of people
> would be bad_

Because the "race" of the person is irrelevant?

Maybe there are political or moral reasons as to why you would choose to not
purchase from a certain _country_ (ie human rights), but of course we _do_
have labels for that.

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mseebach
Who are you to decide what's irrelevant? More information is always better,
right? Let people decide for themselves?

Also, never mind that there are certain instances where concerns against
certain countries is merely thinly veiled racism against the people in those
countries.

The parent was obviously, as they stated in so many words, playing devils
advocate (and so was I in the above, for the record). The subtext is that
whether it's GMO or not is equally irrelevant and will only serve a purpose
for those with unfounded prejudices (and for those that might be confused into
giving such prejudice undue consideration).

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SquareWheel
My initial reaction is to agree, and that more information is always a
positive thing. But as I've read further into the issue I've come around to
the other side. That by putting labels on GMO products specifically, we're
implying that there's a safety concern.

The comments from anti-GMO groups are strongly in support of labeling, and the
reasons generally come down to "it'll make it easier to ban them".

[https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/wp-
content/uploads/20...](https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/wp-
content/uploads/2013/10/GLP-right-to-know-infographic.pdf)

So at this point my feeling is that labeling is only beneficial if it includes
all the information -- more of a history of the ingredients. Do they come from
GMOs, cross or mutation breeding?

If the issue were really about giving consumers the right to know, this would
be the ideal solution. Otherwise - and I suspect this is the case - labeling
appears to be step 1 in an effort to ban GMOs completely. And considering the
positive impacts GMOs will have for the human race in the next 20 years, that
would be very disappointing indeed.

~~~
alexwebb2
> My initial reaction is to agree, and that more information is always a
> positive thing. But as I've read further into the issue I've come around to
> the other side. That by putting labels on GMO products specifically, we're
> implying that there's a safety concern.

Exactly. The thinly veiled motivation of most labeling proponents is to use it
as a scare tactic.

I've always viewed it as being similar in spirit to putting those "Evolution
is just a theory" stickers on high school biology textbooks.

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bsbechtel
From a marketing point of view, labeling is only going to take away a value-
add advantage that non-GMO products have over unlabeled items. I am aware of
several GMO free companies that are growing by leaps and bounds, and can
charge 20% more by VOLUNTARILY labeling their products as GMO free. If all
food products are forced to label themselves as GMO or GMO free, this price
premium isn't so great because the cost of all food products goes up to pay
for the labeling + FDA oversight. In addition, if you ran consumer marketing
A/B testing to compare two products labeled GMO free vs GMO and GMO free vs no
label, it might actually show that more GMO free products are sold when
displayed against a no label product rather than a GMO label product. Finally,
mandatory labeling for nutritional products hasn't been proven to dramatically
affect health outcomes of a population, so it seems like the outcome of a GMO
labeling requirement wouldn't be too different from that.

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beardicus
Well then I sure do hope we start labeling mutagenic breeding too:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding)

But nobody seems to have an issue with that. No problems for selective
breeding with huge mutations from radiation or mutagenic chemicals, but insert
some precise, well-studied genes into another organism and people lose their
minds.

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askyourmother
GMO - what's not to love about plants designed to bath in larger quantities of
carcinogenic pesticides whilst their natural competitors wither under the
chemical assault? Or seeds that do not allow the next generation to seed? I
mean that's great right?

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nashashmi
I am saddened by the comments expressed here. They proudly support gene
hacking and unsympathetically hate all those who call for caution and care.

We keep adding to our information banks about DNA. We had and have more
questions than answers about the complexities of DNA. And yet we still want to
modify the gene artificially and put the results into production without
waiting on more research. This seems like a form of hubris, because we think
the knowledge we have is enough.

The opponents of genetic modification give anger and frustration to supporters
that they end up putting on side blinders and blissfully ignore all of the
very causes of concern. It is a behavior similar to global warming skeptics
reacting against climate change alarmists.

Philosophically speaking, there is a concept called the Dunning-Kruger effect:
The people with the least doubt in what they are doing perform the worst,
whereas the people with the most doubt perform a whole lot better. Doubt is
healthy, and foolish pride/arrogance can only lead us to failure.

So let's agree that more research is needed. And let's not bash those who want
to side with caution. And let's allow for freedom and respect to label GMO's
as GMOs. We reach a healthy society, not a dictating one.

~~~
jbob2000
Here's the thing about wanting more research; you can always do more research.
There's no such thing as having a full understanding of something, so it's a
bit of a cop-out to just say "ehhh, more research is needed". You can say that
till the cows come home. And aside from that, we still don't even really
understand "food", there's no "food science" that is even close to accurate.

There are millions of people involved in the food supply chain. At some point,
if a GMO food becomes toxic to us, by sheer probability, someone involved in
food will raise the alarms.

I think the caution around GMO foods is misplaced. GMO, Organic, or neither,
the kid at the grocery store sprays chemicals all over them multiple times a
day to keep them fresh. Vegetables and fruits are picked under-ripe and
ripened with chemicals. The food is packaged in plastics and shipped along a
smokey, polluted freeway. Of all the things to attack about the food supply
chain, GMO is the last thing to worry about.

