I am getting really tired of how certain words about our foods are being bandied about like magic incantations. I just got off the phone with a woman advocating for the GMO labeling law who said I dont want all these chemicals in my food. Well guess what your food I MADE up of chemicals (as well as molecules, minerals, etc). All life is a collection of chemicals (et al). Then there is natural — I especially hate the word natural. Plutonium is natural. Arsenic is natural. Lets not even get me going on the word organic Let me be clear, I dont have a problem with natural or organic foods. I am talking about our use of language, and how all too often understanding is replaced with assumptions about what is better. It is far more complicated than two legs bad, four legs good. And thus we come to GMOs. If you dont want to eat GMOs then more power to you. That is your choice. If you want GMOs labeled, then sure I will back a good law for labeling. That being said I think the current law being proposed here in Oregon is NOT a good law. Why? Because it lumps one whole set of genetic modifications and called them GMO, and ignores the others. Even within the things called GMO it lumps very different things together and lets people assume they are bad, because clearly if it is labeled it has to be bad. A good law (in my humble opinion) is one that identifies HOW and WHY the food was genetically modified. Is it cloned (like grapes and bananas are for example)? Is the genome modified through selective breeding or hybridization? Or is it by recombinant DNA modification. There is a big difference been turning on (or off) existing chromosomes in wheat, and mixing naked mole rat DNA into your kale. Why is it being genetically modified? Is it to be disease resistant, or is it to produce pesticides? Lets go back to cloning. I personally am concerned about the number of cloned foods we eat — apples, bananas, grapes, etc — because these monocultures run the risk of diseases decimating core food stocks. Irish Potato Famine anyone? How about the current problems we are having with Bananas? And finally let me present you with this factoid: I am a genetically modified organism. I have mixture of my own human DNA, other humans RNA, and mouse RNA coursing through my body. Should I be forced to self identify? No one knows the long term ramifications of this (very standard) treatment, but it is preserving the quality of life for lots of people like me. So please, if you want labeling, then support the right kind of labeling. Give people actually useful information that allows for educated decisions. Instead of making GMO the next Organic
Posted on: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 03:19:41 +0000
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