Speaking only for myself, it strikes me as decidedly odd that people elect caution only in the face of scary science-y things. The primitive plant breeding from decades ago was not and is not safe. It can and did produce dangerous and toxic products.
I applaud caution, but selective caution paired with willful blindness looks like madness.
>people elect caution only in the face of scary science-y things
A convenient, though not entirely accurate dismissal.
Perhaps it's the scale of the usage combined with the financial incentive to declare safety, further combined with the fight to ensure that people are uninformed with regard to what they are ingesting. Where else is it acceptable to deny people information they desire to make their own choice? And, what else is more sensitive and personal than what we choose to consume?
Imagine for a moment that your own review led you to believe the science was still out on GMOs. Then, you might imagine the desire to know.
And, all of this is then combined with a decidedly checkered past in declaring safety through science.
It's no coincidence that all of your arguments could have equally been applied to, say, thalidomide.
Painting anyone who holds a different viewpoint as willfully blind and mad doesn't present you as some sort of enlightened pro-science champion. In fact, the scientific process itself is one of continuous discovery. Some people may prefer to choose whether and when to volunteer their bodies for such discovery.
Reasonable people can disagree here. You'd make a more effective advocate with that understanding.
Reasonable people can reasonably disagree on a great many subjects. I don't think the current so-called debate over plant genomes qualifies as reasonable. It's driven by fear of the unknown and poorly understood on the parts of many.
I don't think "Contains GMOs" is a useful information to provide to consumers. I think it tells them too little to allow for proper decision-making and serves only to fuel fears. It means that something, somewhere, in the package was at some point modified. It says nothing about what was modified, what the modification was, or what the consequences of it are.
I think it's willfully blind to apply one safety standard to GMOs and a wildly different one to crude barnyard breeding with all the radioactive and chemical mutagens a scientist can find. That barnyard breeding has quite a history of producing unintended consequences.
Reasonable people can reasonably differ. I have found this is a subject where being reasonable serves primarily to inflame fears. Suddenly people are painting you with moral brushes made of horrifying birth defects.
I applaud caution, but selective caution paired with willful blindness looks like madness.