From: Alfio Puglisi (puglisi@arcetri.astro.it)
Date: Tue Jun 24 2003 - 05:12:05 MDT
On Mon, 23 Jun 2003, John K Clark wrote:
>"Alfio Puglisi" <puglisi@arcetri.astro.it> Wrote:
>
> >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.
>
>I'm a libertarian so I have no objection to a GM label on a can of peas, and
>for the same reason I have no objection to having the astrological sign of
>the man who packed the peas into the can on the label too, but I do object
>to forcing somebody to do either of those things.
The "forcing" of labels is to prevent a bigger, messier sequence of
events: companies selling foods without labels, people (as it was
suggested) setting up labs for analyzing food and publishing reports,
companies suing those labs for misleading information, special interest
groups lobbying for this and that, and consumers that do not know what to
do. It's something like the lesser of evils. Complete, in-depth labels
would not only settle the GM arguments, but also provide benefits in other
ways, for example the plethora of chemical additives.
>Forget GM, if people are worried about the food supply they should
>demonstrate against the huge amount of antibiotics injected into
>millions of cows and chickens that helps bacteria develop resistance to
>those drugs; and also complain about the unsanitary and unusual culinary
>practices in China that gave us SARS and many varieties of influenza.
>There is little doubt those two things have killed people, lots and lots
>of people, GM food almost certainly never hurt anybody.
I agree, but those are independent issues. Protesting one does not mean
accepting another one.
Some years ago, Europe was shocked by the "mad cow" disease. Nevermind
that the public fear was orders of magnitude higher than needed (and I was
happily buying steaks at half the price). After that incident, most meat
products here have a label that says where and how the animal was raised.
Of course only in general terms, but again, I see that as a step in the
good direction.
Ciao,
Alfio
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