I'd be okay with GMO labeling
if (and it's a big if)
there were simultaneously;
a) better scientific literacy on the subject (in other words, if the word "frankenfood" quits getting tossed around and/or people start noting how ridiculous it is to differentiate between a surgical gene insertion and the sledgehammer methods of conventional plant breeding)
b) there were REAL transparency in the use of foodstuffs from top to bottom in the food chain. This means that if someone
calls a food manufacturer (and hey-- having a phone number on all packaging might be a GREAT start, even) that consumer SHOULD, legitimately, be able to ask about co-processing of ANY other foodstuff, ask about SOURCING of any ingredient, and get answers that are honest and forthcoming. I wish that it weren't like pulling teeth to get information.
c) finally, we need to apply the SAME standard to conventionally produced foodstuffs. So if I want to know what a particular ingredient might, in a genetic sense, be related to-- I should have a way to find that out.
If that includes GM ingredients, so be it, and people who care enough can make all of the phone calls they want to investigate. Of course, I can't really USE the information unless I have a complete profile that tells me exactly which gene products I have an allergy to, and it also doesn't reveal which gene products are PRESENT in the conventional crops, because it just isn't known in most cases.
The numbers of FA people actually harmed by undisclosed cross-contamination in restaurants and food processing are MANY orders of magnitude higher than the numbers of FA people who are
theoretically vulnerable via GM of food crops or, for that matter, by "emerging" food allergens produced conventionally. Though to be fair, I predict that the latter is the greater threat.
There are several examples that I'm aware of in which a GMO under development was redesigned or scrapped because of allergen concerns-- even
theoretical allergen concerns. GM foods have to pass through a series of regulatory hurdles that conventional varieties do not, so the risks are probably about equal even in the most critical evaluation of their safety.
Sorry. It's just that I find this kind of thing MADDENING. Neo-Luddism for its own sake shouldn't be driving things by masquerading as other concerns and by manipulating the masses with unfounded fear... but that seems to be how it has been working.
Risk evaluation places a disproportionate danger on things which are alien, mysterious or poorly understood. This is why people fear airplanes but not automobiles, even though this is directly counter to the actual risks involved. It's because they KNOW how a car is operated, but the forces that keep an aircraft aloft aren't as widely understood. Ergo, it is completely understandable that people FEAR biotech-produced foods and medicines more than they do conventionally-produced ones. But that doesn't make the fear a
rational one, necessarily. Suspicion of the unknown is a
hard-wired human trait; it's what kept us alive as a species and allowed there to be 7bn of us on the planet to begin with. So it isn't that I'm saying it shouldn't be that way. It's just that if we allow it to rule our decision making the way we did when we lived in small tribal groups during the Ice Age, we're going to have a lot of problems maintaining this population...
or not, as Ark pointed out.
Again, I'm not "pro" anything here, I just understand the science so that GM crop development isn't an unknown for me personally. I feel the same way about 'natural' pesticides and herbicides versus synthetic ones, food irradiation, etc. There are things to be fearful about in technology, but if pharmacology in the past 100 years has taught us ANYTHING about the law of unintended consequences, the thing that truly stands out to me is that EMPIRICALLY driven development of crops, drugs, and medical practice is often fraught with MORE pitfalls than the high tech, basic-research driven version. Consider a drug that targets a particular condition. Do you want the one that is plant-derived, "all-natural" and causes an unknown plethora of side effects because while it "works" to treat "problem Z" it isn't really clear HOW it works... or, for that matter, exactly how "problem Z" happens in the first place? Well, yeah-- maybe... if it's that or 'incredibly painful imminent death" then probably so. But if you have a choice between a drug that targets 99% of one enzyme's activity (the target) and 30%-60% of seven OTHERS (unintended targets)... versus a
deliberately designed drug that targets 75% of the target AND NOTHING ELSE, which one seems like the 'better' drug? The SAFER drug?
Of course-- it's the one with the greater precision. The one that does only what we were hoping, and nothing else. Of course, that doesn't mean that a drug class can't still have unintended effects, particularly long-term ones. But that's true of BOTH of those hypothetical drugs. But 100 years ago, many laypersons would have chosen an herbal preparation over a synthetic, simply on the basis of familiarity. Nevermind that the 'natural' version might come with liver toxicity that the refined versions didn't. <sigh>
Same thing is true in plant genetics. There are gene
linkages when you begin talking about traits produced by or selected for using conventional breeding. Crop scientists may not care what 'secondary' traits come as a package deal with a desirable one, as long as they don't affect the commercial status of the crop... but that doesn't mean that they won't turn out to be important to someone, somewhere. People with PKU and other metabolic disorders have some skin in this game, too.
We've been accelerating the crop development timeline as human beings for not-too-many generations of people. I'm going to seriously LMAO if it turns out that GM foods weren't the problem with increasing atopy and autoimmune disorders, and that something that happened back in Luther Burbank's day
is. Funnier still if it turns out to be something like a "natural" pesticide like Rotenone, which has only been in TRULY wide use since the 'green' revolution of the 1980's and a return to a scaled up verison of organic ag in the 90's.
We're operating under the assumption that the
familiar is safe. It is NOT, nor is it all well-defined. If the argument is about the
speed with which GM can accomplish what conventional breeding takes more time to do... well, that's probably a red herring as well. We're saying that pressuring organisms at a rate 100X (as we have for the past 10K years or so) is fine, selective breeding at even 1000X the rate of human evolution (as in the 20th century) is okay... but that a rate which is 10
4X isn't, in that case.
It
might be true (it's what the Paleo-diet folks certainly claim, anyway)... but if it is, then we're right back to pre-agricultural revolution foodstuffs. At that point, we've got a much, MUCH bigger problem than labeling things that
might turn out to be food allergens to someone somewhere, because we're going to have to use low-yield and pest-prone varieties and not everyone is going to be eating.
Again, I know that I'm soapboxing a little. It's just really hard for me not to try to explain this in the scientific terms. Sorry.
Topic: Petition Seeking Mandatory Labeling of Genetically Engineered Foods (Read 5304 times)
