From: Alfio Puglisi (puglisi@arcetri.astro.it)
Date: Mon Jun 23 2003 - 04:50:58 MDT
On Mon, 23 Jun 2003, Damien Broderick wrote:
>
>>Chanting, banging drums and carrying signs that read
>>"We Don't Want to Eat Their Corporate Creations,"
>
>Why don't they fuck off and eat something else, then?
The problem is that it's very difficult to know if some packaged food you
found in the supermarket is made with GM food or not. I'm totally in favor
of clear labels and such. This way I can skip the "natural" ones and go
for an all-GM diet :-))
Here's a real-world example from a similar problem: in the EU, different
countries produce (and consume) different kinds of chocolate. The
percentage of cocoa varies between 20% and 60%, with most products
averaging 25%. In most of the EU, a small fraction of the product (say 5%)
is replaced with "filler" additives that have different tastes too. As you
can imagine, here in Italy we DON'T use additives, and there's a minimum
cocoa percentage before something can be (legally) called "chocolate".
Now, the EU is trying to bring the different food standards in a common
one. For chocolate, they ruled that up to 5% of the total weight can be
replaced with filler additives with different taste. Something that no one
here wants to eat.
What's the problem, you'll ask? Just don't buy them. But, the problem is
that, up to the 5% limit, the producer is not required to write it on the
label, and the consumer has NO way to know. And a big collective "fuck
you" came from the entire country, addressed to Bruxelles. I don't know
the final result yet :-)
What will happen? Pure-cocoa brands will have to invent their new
denomination (e.g. "pure chocolate" and so on), probably raising prices,
and causing great confusion on the market. All because someone up there
does not want to tell people what they are eating.
I'm a GM supporter, but I can understand very well people protesting the
"smuggling" of GM products without proper labels and such. Shouldn't
consumers be informed for a free market to work?
Ciao,
Alfio
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