I'd love to see those regulations. As far as I know, the FDA basically said said that they frowned on those labels, because the term GMO indicated modification (which describes everything) not engineering (in the case where the term GMO or genetically modified is used), and also because they don't like labels that have the implication that something is superior when in fact there is no difference, and a few other reasons that the label can be misleading (like if a bottle of pure orange juice said it was non-GMO, when there are no GE oranges). However, they have not banned it, merely expressed disapproval. I agree it would not be justified, just as I do not feel going the other way and forcing labeling of either containing or not containing GE ingredients is justified.

I don't get how so many people can keep making that claim. Have you been to a grocery store at all? there's plenty of products that say 'contains no GMOs' or 'Contains no genetically engineered ingredients.' There's also the organic label, which is a bit different in that it also covers cultivation practices, but it guarantees that the crops are not GE. If I would have known so few people paid attention to this I would have bought a few and uploaded pictures to link to.

Not true. Off the top of my head, I can think of the Lenape potato, which was a conventionally bred hybrid that ended up producing toxic amounts of the glycoalkaloid solanine, and celery which produced so much psoralen that it gave the people who harvested it blisters. I doubt those were intentional (although it is possible that the parents may have also had those traits)..

Not related to the topic at hand, but that isn't true either. I've got a shipova tree in my yard which is a Pyrus x Sorbus cross. Triticale is another example, among plenty of others.

Here's a link that might help. Peanuts might kill someone. wheat might make someone sick. GMOs, or anything else not labeled, will not. The difference is pretty clear. You want to know something like that? Fair enough. You want to force others to tell you? Nope, just don't buy it then.

First off, there is a big difference between withholding information and not putting it on a label. If you did that, there would be way too much to label. It isn't being a market worshiper if you say that only essential items should be labeled any anything after than should be voluntary. How hard is that to comprehend?

I want to know the complete list of mutations in my food. Do you care? Too bad, I want you to pay for it.

And if you look at food ingredients you can already tell if something is GE.

So, if an apple grower does not tell you what sport they use every time you buy their apples, that is promoting ignorance? No. there is a difference between preventing people from knowing things and not telling them.

Tell that to vegans who call companies up to discover what exactly is in the 'natural ingredients' portion of the label, or to the Muslims who call companies to find out what type of gelatin they use. Has doing the homework ever occurred to you?

No, I'm promoting letting science determine a baseline for what, at minimum, must be labeled, then letting everything else follow market demand. You are promoting an unrealistic system of forcing what you want upon food producers and demanding everyone else pay for it.

When you buy something, it has the ingredients on it. That is informed consent. Is there more you would like to know that it does not say? Don't buy it then. You are free to walk away, just like a Muslim who does not know how a piece of beef was slaughtered is free to not eat it.

Fair enough. I must have missed the comment the first time around. It is still unrealistic. If you want to know what state something came from, what variety of crops were used, how they were developed, what genes they have, what proteins are produced, the nature of those proteins, what lines were crossed to make them, who developed the crops, how the crops were propagated, who propagated them, what fertilizers were used, where those fertilizers came from, what insecticides were used, where those pesticides came from, when they were used, what herbicides were used, where those herbicide came from, when they were used, what fungicides were used, where those fungicides came from, when they were used, what PGRs were used, where those PGRs came from, when the crops were irrigated, how often they were irrigated, from where the irrigation came from, a chemical analysis of the soil and water, when the crops was harvested, who harvested it, how it was harvested, what machines were used to harvest it, the cultivation techniques used to grow it, the environmental impact of the growing methods used to grow it, the on site insect biodiversity end ecological conditions of the farm, what pets were present, the proximity of the farm to livestock and roads, how the crop was stored, how long it was stored, where it was stored, ect. then that's fine. Don't go to the government and demand that you get to know though. Don't like not knowing those? Do your homework, or don't buy the product. I know this is an unpopular sentiment, but the world does not exist to cater to your whims. Informed consent does not mean you are entitled to whatever you want all the time.

Looking voer your links, link one comes from a report by 'Coalition for GM-Free India,' which I suppose I'd have to look over, but given that those claims contradict data and those organizations with GMO Free in the title rarely have a reputation of honesty (which I know is a poor argument but giving their report a quick look over doesn't really blow me away), it isn't high on my to do list. Link two is about resistance, and that has more to do with cultivation issues, in not unique to any strain of resistant plant, GE or not, so to call it a failure is not very nuanced or accurate. Third links is the same source as the first, and the fourth mentions that there has been a downward trend from earlier years, and even mentions Bt cotton as a reason.

Huber's work was never published. He made some pretty extraordinary claims, then never published his data, so if you are calling that important research, well, that isn't good. I can't really comment on it besides pointing out some of the absurdity and inaccuracy of his claims because there is nothing but claims, no fact, to talk about. You can not disprove him because he has nothing solid to disprove. The CSMonitor link isn't too hot either, failing to consider a number of important details. The Séralini study in the next link has been widely criticized for shoddy methodology and unsupported conclusions, including by the EFSA, FSANA, and the French HCB. Citing him does not advance your position among those who closely follow this topic, nor does citing Huber.

As for the next two links, it would not hesitate to believe them. I do not mean to imply that Monsanto does no wrong, especially with some of the chemicals they have produced in the past. The EPA link looks like they made made a mistake (since companies don't normally not brand their premium products). The bribery link is bad, although hardly unique for a company, and usually is unfortunately required to do business in certain places (not that this excuses it, just that you are talking about big business, not solely Monsanto). As for the last link, biopiracy is a stupid crime designed to get money from companies, and IIRC (it would be akin to me saying that because I live in an area where mayapple naturally grows that I deserve a cut from the profits of a company using the podophyllotoxin in mayappe to produce cancer drugs), Monsanto filed the proper paperwork, and someone else made the mistake elsewhere. Not really damning. The link in you second post looks like a mix of fact, science by jury (and a French one at that), and hot air (and naturally doesn't mention them doing things like compensating farmers in South Africa for their wrongly hybridized corn seed).

So, I stand by what I said. Most of the things out there about Monsanto are baseless. If they are so bad, base the accusations on fact. Also, since you bring up biodiversity, GE is a way of improving plants, biodiversity is what you grow. Two different things, and while you could accuse companies of reducing biodiversity, that is what agriculture has been doing for hundreds years, and what produced many high yielding elite lines, so it is a much more complex issue than it is made out to be and one that has little to do with genetic engineering.

Essential has a pretty clear definition. Knowing if something has peanuts or gluten or soy is essential. Knowing that a product contains corn sold by a particular seed company planted on a particular date by a particular farm in a state and fertilized with various fertilizers and harvested with one brand of harvester and stored in a blue silo ect. is not. Pretty cut and dry really. It isn't being a market worshiper to say that rules and regulations should be based on what makes sense, not whoever shouts the loudest.

Haram food m might send you to hell. Don't people deserve to know that about their food? Some people think that vaccines cause autism, and some people want textbooks to carry warning labels for evolution. Hey, some people believe it, or doesn't democracy mean that your ignorance is just as good as my knowledge? The information IS out there. Just because one does not seek it out does not meet that it should be forced onto products. You are just playing the lazy victim and trying to scare people about a non-issue. You are just trying to justify irrationally singling out a single aspect of food because anti-science assholes have spend years demonizing it and now want to give their nonsense validity by requiring special warning labels.

That might have something to do with all the groups out there lying about the safety of GE crops. furthermore, if food produced by hybrid seed is so good, why isn't it labeled? If food produced by mutagenesis is so good, why isn't it labeled? Do you see how absurd that argument is?

And anti-GMO people are not entitled to special treatment because they complain really loudly. You want a non-essential label? Get in line behind every other group and create a market demand for it. Don't go to the government and demand to be catered to.

I never said that. i just think that if you have to use lies and deceit to make your point against them then maybe they're not the great evil they are often made out to be. Is pointing out falsehoods and mentioning what actually happened bad if the accusations are serious enough? does that mean I support everything they do if I demonstrate that a claim against them is factually false?

That's amazing to me. BP fucks the ocean, and Haliburton makes money disappear for a war, and the guys who sell this are the evil ones.

Ah, that explains why they are selling the insecticide reducing Bt crops in the above link.

How so? Let me guess, 'superweeds' and 'superpests'? Please, resistance breakdown and herbicide resistance are nothing new, are more cultivation issues than crop issues (particularly the resistant pests) and worst case scenario is you lose the benefits already provided.

That must be why farmers willingly buy them, why farmers in developing countries wait in lines to get their bag of GE seed.

And there's thousands of articles describing how terrible Merck and Pfizer are for causing autism with their horrible horrible vaccines. So what? The vast majority of those articles turn out to be bullshit. Look at the cases above, and dig deeper.

Bottom line: no one is saying Monsanto is perfect. They are a profit driven company with too little competition and a bit of a problem with revolving doors. But most of the things said about them are lies and deceptions, and that is never a good way to make an argument. That's what gets me the most, all these anti-GMO groups out there who publish the stuff about GMOs and Monsanto. They lie (go to 42:25 to see the biggest most trusted most frequently cited name in the anti-GMO movement lie about something in the very abstract of the paper he's citing for a good example).. I used to think they were outright assholes, but the more misinformation and falsehoods I see about them the more sympathetic I feel toward them (maybe that's part of their grand conspiracy half the GMO denialists out there think they're conducting. You want to be against Monsanto? Fair enough, but you shouldn't do so because some blogger who wouldn't know a corncob from his asshole said their CEO eats a bowl of kittens everyday fro breakfast, and you certainly shouldn't reject the science of the things they sell over it.

Personally, I think the whole Monsanto thing is pretty clever. If you can;t win in the court of science, demonize the one associated with the science and try to hit the science through guilt by association and win in the court of public opinion. Bonus is that anyone who does fact checking is clearly in on it and thinks they are an upstanding corporate citizen and therefore probably should not be trusted.

About everywhere.

No it isn't. Knowing if something has peanuts is essential. Knowing if something has gluten is essential. Knowing the details of the variety of an ingredient is not.

First, I know that, second, so what? Really, so what? Do you have any idea how agriculture works? People use herbicide with plants that can tolerate them, GMO or not, deal with it, and they've been doing this since long befor eGMOs where a thing.

Yeah, I'd love to see a strong source for that in the amounts of Round Up you get in your food, preferably several.

First GMO crop: tobacco, China, 1988. How is that new?

Any more radical than a doubled haploid four way hybrid, or something cultured from an irradiated blob of callus cells? Ok, you're binging in DNA in a new way, as opposed to more traditional methods, which do some pretty unusual things sometimes. So what?

Bull. Shit. Unless by sparely tested you mean have been studied for decades with hundreds of studies done across the world and millions of dollars spend to reach the widely held scientific consensus that they are safe.

No they don't, and even without getting into the Monsanto thing (which is usually overblown anyway), labeling should not be based on non-scientific things. I want to know if my food is picked by migrant farm workers laboring under abusive exploitative conditions being paid an unfair wage, but that doesn't merit a mandatory label.

Yeah, I'm sure that will happen right after it turns out that vaccines cause autism. I'm interested, what could possibly be the biochemical basis for how the cry genes, nptII, c4 epsps, bar, cspB, prv cp, and/or cmv cp (the transgenes used in presently approved GE crops) could possibly in any way be harmful to humans? Because for all the accusation, no one ever wants to talk biochemistry to back their musing. I wonder why? Could it be that the accusations have no scientific merit whatsoever?

A number of people have said this, and all I can say is, do you people go to grocery stores? There are quite a number of items that say this on them. It isn't illegal, the FDA just frowns upon it because it gives the false impression that non-geneitcally engineered foods are superior, and because the term GMO is not technically accurate (as GMO means genetically modified organism, which every crop is, and the term should really be GEO).

No, I'm saying there is no meaningful argument that can be applied to one but not the others.

Ge crops are safe, also, see above.

You mean just like every other herbicide resistant plant on the planet? And as for producing their own pesticides, all plants do that. In fact, most of the pesticides in your diet are natural poisons.

And it also means that much harsher herbicides were replaced. Herbicides are pretty common.

I'm sure if you drank the stuff, but in the levels present in your food, not even close.

See above. Plant physiology 101: all plants have pesticides in them, so that is not something innately worrying, and especially not when we know exactly how this pesticide works. You body treats it like any other protein, it works by binding to receptors humans just do not have, and it isn't even active in acidic environments like the mammalian gut anyway.

Ah, so you're liberal unscientific then. Accept the science of climate change and evolution, but reject that of medical and agricultural science. Sorry, but that's no better than rejcting evolution or climate change.

Nonsense! It takes so long for new crops to get on the market. That is another anti-GMO talking point that falls flat. There are tons of crops in development that get stuck at the regulatory process because of how strict is is. It took years to get DroughtGard approved, and look at the rough time the AquaAdvantage salmon is having.

Take your pick.

Yeah, that's what the creationists, climate change denialists, anti-vaxxers, and every other anti-science group out there says when someone calls them out on their crap. If the vast majority of the anti-GMO points (some of which you used) had any basis in reality and were unique to GE crops, then I'd say otherwise. As it stands, it is anti-science.