Votes on Farm Bill amendments often do not follow predictable partisan lines, so it can be interesting (for geeks, anyway) to see how senators are voting. For example, Bernie Sanders of Vermont introduced an amendment that would have “require[d] that any food, beverage, or other edible product offered for sale” that has any genetically engineered ingredients “have a label on [it] indicating that the food, beverage, or other edible product contains a genetically engineered ingredient.”
So, who’s against labeling genetically engineered food? It turns out that half the Democratic caucus is against it. As you might expect, midwestern Democrats were the most reluctant. Even the very progressive Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin wasn’t going to mess with Monsanto. Joe Manchin? He was with Bernie. So was Jon Tester.
Of course, not a single Republican thought that consumers should know what they’re putting in their body.
That’s because Republican senators have absolute faith in science.
Why are liberals and the left in general opposed to genetically modified food? This obsession with genetically modified food among liberals and the left really baffles me. Even though I support nuclear power, I at least understand the opposition there. This makes no real sense.
I guess we can label it, like they do in Europe, I just don’t really care. No evidence it’s bad or has adverse health effects. Not sure how I’d have voted if I were a Senator. Low hanging fruit, but at the same time such a non-issue for me.
You really don’t know why? Oy!!
No. “Oh this genetically modified. Cool.” puts it in shopping cart as there’s no difference
Not sure how you would’ve voted? That’s bizarre to me.
You realize that companies currently suffer under the lash of having to label xantham gum and citric acid and safflower oil, even though there’s no evidence that any of them have adverse health effects?
how can anyone vote against bernie sanders and pat leahy and for James Inhofe and Ted Cruz.
Those are ingredients. What is the difference between gm corn and corn? There is none.
And it prolly would have depended on my state. If my state insisted on labeling, might as well insist on national.
you can’t plant gm corn seed unless you buy it.
First, I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure there is a difference between GM corn and regular corn. They can tell which is which in a laboratory.
Second, why does my shirt label say ‘Made in Cambodia?’ Is the cotton different?
i am for labeling. I didn’t say I was for banning.
Right. But I just don’t see why it matters. Probably the best argument in favor of labeling is to end the quackery and scare tactics surrounding the products.
Quackery and scare tactics is right. Folks have gone all emo over GM foods. Truth be told, nearly every plant and animal you eat is genetically modified, and has been for about 10,000 years now. The original wild grain stocks didn’t yield enough to justify farming but some of it evolved in our direction, and our ancestors took it from there.
Selective breeding of animals is genetic modification.
Plus, those GM foods have vastly increased the yield of, for example, rice, and kept literally millions of people from starving.
I get it. Corporations want to make more money and increasing the yield of plants is one way to do that. Making plants resistant to disease is another. When the corporations lean on the farmers to buy only their products that’s a bad thing, but that’s nasty economics, not botany.
(However, I do complain about tomatoes. They have bred tomatoes to produce more fruit per vine, and that has diminished the old timey tomato taste. I grow my own now and they taste better, although I do realize that my little plants are genetically modified.)
From Scientific American:
and India’s Rice Revolution.
Selective breeding of animals can’t put sardine genes into a strawberry (actual case).
Well labeling killed safe and effective gamma ray sterilization of food. People were afraid that it would make the food radioactive, which is nonsense because gammas don’t change nuclei and don’t stick around because they’re photons.
Just being devil’s advocate here. I oppose GMO foods.
I’ll try.
We don’t know if GMO crops will have any adverse effects on humans and other animals. We’ll find out in a few decades while we’re all being guinea pigs. Not the first or last time technology has treated the public this way.
What we do know is that Monsanto’s patented GMO seeds have one purpose other seeds don’t, they can withstand the Round-Up herbicide. It’s like a twofer for Monsanto — seeds and herbicide. This combination is too expensive for subsistence farmers in third world and developing countries. But like the sub-prime scum that sold mortgages to people that couldn’t afford them, Monsanto is selling to poor farmers. Farmers that have/are being driven into insurmountable debt. This is a huge factor in the increase in suicides among farmers in India.
If those seeds remained on the lands where they’re planted, farmers would have a choice. Unfortunately, seeds migrate. And Monsanto monitors and protects its patent — they go after any farmer that hasn’t purchased their GMO seeds when any of them land on that farmer’s field. (Easy to prove that it’s their seed.) Won’t take much time before Monsanto has a monopoly on several basic crops.
There’s the issue of GMO seeds cross-contaminating non-GMO seeds. So, we end up with an unintended and untested hybrid.
Then there’s the issue of worldwide basic crops monocultures. The potato blight in Ireland is a cautionary tale.
And what if those GMO seeds aren’t good for the birds and the bees?
Ironically, the Roundup resistance gene is jumping to the very weeds that Roundup is supposed to control. Soon Monsanto will own the entire world’s genome.
There’s actually a pretty simple argument: we have a market system, for better or worse, that is supposed to work on the basis of having informed buyers and sellers. By allowing buyers to know what they are buying, they can decide to support or not support certain types of crops.
For example: there’s not much reason to believe that organic crops are healthier than non-organic crops. (Maybe there’s a marginal difference in those crops that tend to have heavy pesticide use.) But I almost always buy organic if I can, and preferably do so at the farmers market.
Why? Because I want to support the system of organic agriculture, which is required to avoid the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, which are fossil fuel derived and end up leading to soil mismanagement, and to promote a more sustainable (if not yet completely sustainable) system.
Same goes for GMO crops. I’m not afraid of them, but I don’t like the systems that produce them. GMO seed is made by a small number of companies that use the patent system in terrible ways to stay on top. And on top of that, there’s a fair amount of evidence that GMO crops don’t actually do better than non-GMO crops. (For example, some GMO crops require more water than non-GMO, so it becomes a tradeoff; others have waning effects as nature evolves faster than genetic engineering.) So it’d be great if I could avoid supporting that system.
For now, buying organic is a good way to avoid GMOs, so the labeling law doesn’t matter too much in the big picture.
Getting the label of “organic” is terribly easy.
That’s an argument that you think the certification process isn’t that good, not an argument about whole-systems thinking and informed choice when purchasing food.
(And while I don’t doubt that some farms slip through the cracks, I’d be interested if there is actually evidence of a significant number of farms that don’t deserve the organic label that get it.)
I agree. Here I support labelin organic bc pesticides are something I think people should be informed about. I don’t really buy organic, but this label makes sense to me. As far as the liars, I don’t know the percentage, but I think of it like the corporate income tax. The standards are rigorous (tax is high), but there are an infinite number of loopholes and exceptions. And then small producers are hurt while big agro gets around it. Here I think it’s better than no label and removing the restrictions, but I remain unconvinced that gmo labels are worth any effort.
No evidence it’s bad or has adverse health effects.
Absolutely agree!!!! There IS no evidence of bad health effects!!!!
Oh, I’m sure some whiners and moaners will point out that there actually aren’t very many studies at all on the health effects, good or bad, on GMO foods. And I’ve even heard some real extreme whackos suggest (can you BELIEVE this?) that GMO foods are subject to the same critera for new drugs and have to have trials that test for long-term side effects before being certified for the general public. Can you believe that shit? Good thing Congress didn’t let THAT happen!!!
OK, I’m being sarcastic – sorry if I offend. But the Monsanto-Media complex in the US has done a terrific job of tightly controlling any and all news reports on GMOs, to the point where you simply cannot publish an article on GMOs without pointing out in the first two paragraphs that “there is no evidence of bad health effects”. The problem is they have, like the gun industry lobby, blocked any government studies on GMO foods so we don’t have any data on GMO health effects at all. If GMO foods had been subject to FDA regulations for new pharmaceuticals such studies would have been required, but they side-stepped.
With bad drugs there is a penalty to be paid, but once the problem is recognized it is dealt with (albeit with a lot of suffering). With GMOs if a problem is recognized after 75% of the freaking crops in the country are GMO seed what the hell are we going to do about it?
I oppose high fructose corn syrup too. There is mounting evidence that it is behind the diabetes epidemic.
Besides, what is wrong with knowing what is in what we eat? Are you opposed to all Pure Food and Drug laws? Should we just trust the “magic of the market” to eliminate unsanitary food? I’m not being facetious; I have actually heard that argument from Libertarians.
No evidence of that either. Sugar is really no different. I avoid HFCS myself, but I also avoid sugar in general. And the way to reduce this problem is for the us govt to end sugar subsidies. Good luck with that lol.
Sucrose and fructose are two different chemicals with different absorption rates.
Forgive me, but I have to ask, do you own stock in ADM or Monsanto?
In terms of diabetes there really isn’t a difference. What makes HFCS dangerous is that it is insanely cheap to produce bc of govt subsidies. And bc of that cheapness, it is utilized in a vast amount of products that don’t even really need any sugar. Shit the government buys their sugar to prop them up.
Again, I avoid both, but HFCS I harder to get around.
I may own stock in those companies, but I don’t know if I do. If the government tsp plan I am involved with invests in it then I guess I am. I don’t own any stock privately.
Had to ask. Yeah, they are probably in the C Fund, if not, surely the S fund.
BTW, in terms of diabetes it now looks like artificial sweeteners activate the pancreas also.
Yeah I stay away from it all. I never buy soda either. Tonic water for my rum and gin is about it lol
Reminds me of the tobacco companies swearing (literally under oath) that nicotine was a non-addictive flavor agent and that there was no credible link between cigarette smoking and cancer.
And no I am not opposed to labeling most things. I just don’t see much value in this label in particular. In fact, I want those vitamin and supplement assholes (that Marie2 alluded to in her other thread) to actually be inspected to make sure what they’re saying is in it is actually in it.
I’d like that too.
More random thoughts on labeling is what and how to label marijuana. Fewer requirements are bound to help local growers, whereas high labeling req will lead to Busch-Miller “piss beer pot”. Here I favor as few requirements as possible.
Gee, somehow my labels all go up in smoke …
Elizabeth Warren voted No!!!!!!!!!!
Liz Warren — the Liberal Messiah — voted against labeling and for Monsanto!
ELIZABETH WARREN SOLD YOU OUT!!!!!!
AHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
People like her because she wasn’t afraid to take on the banks. Other than that she seems like a fairly conventional Democrat. Not surprised to see her take a bad vote from time to time.
What are you talking about?!?!?!?!
Freaking Warren supported TARP!!!
So she asks some stooopid questions — just words. You think the banks give a shit about questions when trillllllllllllllllllions of $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ are being handed to them when they gamble and fail and tank the economy?
They literally laughed all the way to bank with our money, supported by Dear Leader Liz.
Here’s a better reason: lots if leftist and/or liberals don’t have to agree with you. A bad vote to you might be a good vote in their eyes. Take this vote for example. Plenty of disagreement in this very thread. If I vote for nuclear power bc I think it’s our only real hope at this point in avoiding climate change, is that a bad vote? Am I in the pocket of “Big Nucler”? Now there might be other alternatives, but that’s what debate is about. So far, I’m not convinced pure renewables are enough, and plenty of other senators might agree.
I actually don’t care very much about GMO labeling. It probably reads that way but I meant even very liberal politicians will take votes that other liberals might object to. Not very different from what you’ve written.
Also, the last thing I’d want to do is require everyone to agree with me or think exactly like I do on any given issue.
Pretty amazing.
They really are all frauds aren’t they? Well, except for Bernie.
One vote makes a fraud? And Bernie has NEVER done anything that one of us might object to? Seriously?
They are human beings, and anyone with any sense does not expect perfection from them. What makes both of these people wonderful and loved Senators is that they do their best for America. Sometimes, they will not have all the information. Sometimes, there will be extenuating circumstances. But overall, they do good work. And that’s enough.
she voted for the austerity budget.
she voted for the disgusting rich-man’s fix to the FAA budget.
She voted for citibank’s jack lew. She voted for republican Chuck Hagel. She voted for the angel of death, John Brennan.
No she votes against transparency, disclosure, and debate in favor of secrecy with Ted Cruz and Monsanto lobbyist.
I don’t have a problem with any of those votes except maybe the last one. And that’s only if her reasons for voting the way she did in any way matches your description of the bill.
Bot
He voted against the current over the counter background check of gun sales.
He voted to immunize gun manufactures from any and all lawsuits. They can intentional manufacture and promote weapons of mass destruction and not have to face the mother of dead kindergartner in court thanks to Bernie’s corruption.
And most infamously, Bernie voted against closing GITMO.
Did you ever buy a tomato that tasted like fish?
Apparently there’s a nifty fish gene that keeps tomatos looking fresh off the vine for weeks. That little experiment didn’t even last out the summer of 1997. Or maybe they discovered a less stinky animal gene.
Like Reagan said – trust, but verify.
As a molecular biologist, I take a dim view of much of the ill-informed alarmism about GM foods. Nonetheless, there is NO possible excuse whatsoever for not requiring labels so that consumers can make their own choices. That such a common-sense requirement doesn’t exist is purely a reflection of the corruption of our political system.
If we were allowed to, I would have voted for this twice!