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Friday, May 25, 2012

Oh, come on already!






Sometimes it seems that people don’t agree for the simple, and in my view perverse, joy they appear to take in disagreeing. What is the big deal about labeling food that has GMO ingredients? Alarmist, they say? If I want to know what I’m putting in my mouth, that’s unreasonable? Big food companies have been putting all kinds of things in my mouth for a long time. Yes, perhaps they are on the package, but if I’m not a chemist, botanist, a food scientist or a particularly curious person, I probably don’t know what they are. When we grew or raised what we ate, we knew. Yes, we needed to get more efficient and grow farming to feed the people. What we didn’t need to do was lose the connection between people and their food that we’ve managed to lose in the process. 

Its time to make that reconnection and it needs to be made in many ways. This is one. We need to give people a true choice of what they choose to eat.  If you don’t want to eat GMO foods and I do, we should be able to make that choice. If I want to save seed and you want to grow GMO crops, you shouldn’t be able to sue me if my seed becomes “contaminated” with genes from yours, or vice versa. Food prices, well, there is another sticky wicket. And an important one that must be addressed. But allowing information about if a food includes GMO ingredients, that seems to be a simple choice.

From today's New York Times:


Concern over the possible health and environmental effects of such food has prompted a move for labeling it, but scientists, farmers and technology companies call the measures alarmist.


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