Speaking as someone who is about as pro-GE as you're going to find (well, in the same sense that I'm pro-vaccine or pro-Pythagorean theorem anyway), I don't care one bit, as long as you put it like that. I'm not about to get on a Jew's case for following Kosher or complain about a Muslim who keeps Halal. I hope you're knowledgeable enough about crop genetics to know just how puzzling that stance is, but as long as you're not going around and saying things that aren't true, trying to stop agricultural progress, demanding special treatment for your lifestyle, or spreading fear to others, then hey, whatever floats your boat. You get your own opinion (just like how Johnny Appleseed believed that grafting trees, now a ubiquitous process in fruit production, was evil because it was 'against the will of God'), just don't make up your own facts.

I disagree with that. Thing is, there is a lot of information you could add about food. tell me your last meal, and I'll tell you something about those plants you probably don't know. If I want to, I can make it sound scary. Did you know your citrus was produced by radiation? Or that many of your grapes were sprayed with plant hormones? Or that your tomatoes may have had non-tomato genes (despite being non-GE, by the way)? Or that your apples were spontaneous somatic mutations? Or that many of your vegetables were bred with gene altering chemicals? Perfectly safe, but what do you think would happen if you required that oranges be labeled as 'Produced with radiation' or that celery had to say 'Produced with chemicals'? It wouldn't tell you anything, but it would scare people who don't understand the science behind crop production. I think that to do so would be somewhat deceptive really, because without fully explaining it, that label is basically like a fact taken out of context. Lets say I tell you your peas have an insecticide in them. Sounds bad, right? What if I say I'm referring to PA1b, a naturally occurring defensive mechanism peas have? Now it sounds less scary. If I only told you the first part, even though what I said was perfectly true, it would have been deceptive of me.

So, I disagree with the notion that it should be labeled (by law anyway, anyone should be free to label as GE/non-GE as they see fit). It isn't informative, it unfairly selects one aspect of the food and singles it out as special, and it will do little more than scare people.

Too bad that doesn't happen. This comes up every time genetic engineering is mentioned, but that isn't what happened. Monsanto doesn't sue farmers for being cross pollinated (and even when it is undesirable, it is cross pollination, not contamination, quit trying to use loaded words, no one calls pollen from outcrossing heirloom varieties pollution when it screws up someone else open pollinated line). They have however sued for knowingly selecting for and propagating material. Every single case, the Schmeiser case, the Parr case, ect. it turned out more than just cross pollination happened.

It would be like if someone accidentally received a copyrighted DVD, then reasoned that Disney or whoever should be more careful with the DVDs that people buy and started producing there own copies, got sued for it, and a bunch of anti-DVD people claimed that people can get sued for receiving DVDs as a way of attaching DVDs to make their position, which also claims that DVDs cause cancer, sound more reasonable.

There's political opposition too, namely from Alaska where they don't want their fishing industry challenged by the new guy. Huzzah for crony capitalism.

More than that, to use your analogy, it would be as if a large number of people did not believe that spending made debt and the consequences it would bring are real things.

This reminds me of when groups like Greenpeace complains about something popular just to get attention. It's just some activist noise making about something topical to bring attention to themselves. What I find funny is that by pulling these stupid stunts, all they are doing is making themselves (and their cause) look bad. Maybe the next time someone hears about an actual legitimate issue in animal welfare they'll think of this and pay it no mind ('Hey, isn't that the same stuff those wackos who complained about Pokemon were going on about?') . The way they trade credibility for publicity (not that they had much credibility to start with) makes me think PETA cares more about their own 15 seconds of fame than actually bringing any benefit to animals.

And by the way, Pokemon are clearly partners, not slaves. The games make generally that pretty clear and go on ad nauseam about poke-friendship or something like that, in fact, something about humans being mean to their Pokemon was even a central part of the plot of the last games, not that any of this is relevant if causing a fuss is your only actual goal.

False. Antibiotics are used to control fireblight in organic apple production.

That's more of a matter of local and vine ripened vs. picked at harvestable maturity (in other words, green), shipped from wherever, and gassed with ethylene than anything (the local guys might also be using a different variety too; some tomatoes are bred for durability but lost some taste along the way). Organic or not doesn't matter, but buying local is usually a good bet.

It isn't hard to find claims that it is more nutritious (although to be fair I can see how there may be some merit to some of those claims under certain conditions, given all the variables that go into producing crops), and if those other things are shown false, yet more other things will be brought in to justify organic. It sounds like the a classic moving goalpost to simply say that organic is all about other things.

I was just on a small, local orchard the other day. Totally not organic it was. Don't assume that growing methods and small farms are necessarily connected; large operations want in on this market as well. You'd be better off hitting the farmer's markets or asking your grocery store about their suppliers than focusing on organic.

If we're making chemistry based jokes, my favorite is organic salt

That's like trying to compare stir fried food with yesterday's leftover. you are comparing two entirely different things. Of course something you grow yourself and eat fresh is going to be better than something that was shipped from California or Chile or wherever. That does not imply that a growing practice is the cause if it; the difference is in freshness, maturity, harvesting and post harvest treatment, and possibly variety. If you compared the non-organic tomatoes I've grown with an organic one shipped hundreds of miles, I'll bet mine would would be far superior in taste, but not because of how it was grown.

What really gets me is the false dichotomy between organic and conventional. It reminds me of how medical quacks try to differentiate between conventional and alternative (or naturopathic or whatever) medicine when the rational thing to do is to focus on what works, not what it is called. Some organic techniques are good. A lot of biological techniques like intercropping, crop rotation, focus on soil microbes, insect mating disruption, passive pest control methods like use of predator insects, increased use of biodiversity, ect. are positives. But that does not mean you should be dogmatic about it, which is exactly what organic is: naturalistic dogma. A natural pesticides is fine in organic production (and before anyone assumes organic uses no pesticides, look up the approved pesticide list), but not a synthetic one, simply on the basis of its origin? That is the classic appeal to nature fallacy. And while it is true that excessive fertilizer use has many negative consequences, why should responsible use of synthetic fertilizers be forbidden? Soil fertility management is damned complex, and it is presumptive to think only 'natural' methods are going to be of sustainable benefit. Genetically engineered crops are a great example of the naturalistic nature of the organic dogma. You can apply Bt to a crop, but if the crop does it itself, it is suddenly forbidden? Even something as simple as an apple modified to not brown can never be organic. Why? It is not natural (or rather, it is not natural and is popularized, unlike things like mutagenesis and chemically induced polyploidy).

My point is that organic has some things going for it, but not because it has some special label like 'organic'. What it has going for it are the biological techniques it uses. Of course, these techniques are not exclusive to organic; if you think your average farmer does not pay attention to things that can make their operations better, you are mistaken and have probably never even set food on an actual farm before. Ultimately, the focus should be on the scientifically verified merit individual practices, not on some label that represents a collection of practices grouped together based on the appeal to nature fallacy with some after the fact justification. The dichotomy misses the point entirely (unless the goal is marketing of course, in which case oversimplifications work great, and absolutes tend to create more true believers than nuance). Even if organic did produce more nutritious food, that would still not support the superiority of organic so much as it would indicate that there is an attribute of some growing method causing the increased nutrition that should be determined, explained, and focused on.

It is one of the bigger points of organic food that is brought up every time the nutritional advantages of organic food is questioned. It is assumed that you pay for what you're not getting. Of course, that takes fro granted that you should be concerned about trace residues of those things, or that the pesticides applied in organic production are leaving safer residues, but nonetheless, that is still one of the arguments for organic food.

Why single out GE crops? Why should they get special restrictions while everything else (like the conventionally bred toxic Lenape potato and herbicide resistant Clearfield wheat) gets a free pass?