rd_macgregor
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Oops, I forgot to mention labelling, which several posters have brought up.
One of the demands frequently made by opponents of GMOs is that products containing them be labeled. The two main justifications usually given for this demand are consumer choice and epidemiology. In the first case, how can an opponent of GM foods avoid them if they don稚 know where they are? In the second case, if there are adverse effects, how will we ever know, if we can稚 differentiate between people who consume GM foods and those who don稚?
Consumer Choice: The usual call for labeling is a simple 田ontains GMO type of notice. While this would allow those who oppose the technology on principle to avoid most of its products (without resorting to buying Certified Organic products), it would fall short of providing any useful health or nutrition information. The position of the Canadian and US governments on this has been that the label requirements will be for pertinent health and safety information. This includes the ingredients, nutritional content/breakdown and safety/health warnings (eg �ay contain nuts?. Because there has never been any evidence of adverse effects from any of the GM crops so far introduced, nor have they (so far) exhibited appreciably different nutritional profiles from their conventional counterparts, no specific mention of these has been required on the label.
Industry is strongly opposed to the ç”°ontains GMO label because they see it as equivalent to a skull and cross-bones. The danger is not so much that consumers would reject the products葉hough that might happen, tooå‚*ut that food processors would move to exclude GM products from their lines in order to avoid having to label them. This is what happened in Europe when a labeling regime was introduced. Even though polls showed that at least two-thirds of consumers would still have continued buying the processed products if they had GM contents, the suppliers of these products realized that none of the customers would refuse to buy the products if the GM elements were eliminated. So there was a lot to gain and nothing to lose for the processors and grocers. The end result is that European consumers now have great difficulty choosing foods with labeled GM content.
It should be noted that the Europeans exempted certain types of products from the labeling requirement. Mostly, these include cheeses produced with chymosin and other food industry products which use GM enzymes or �rocessing aids or GM yeast (bread, beer, wine). Also, there is the problem of detecting GM content in products where the product has been highly refined (oil, starch, sugar). Finally, in any labeling scheme, a threshold must be set. In the EU, the labeling threshold for aggregate GM content is 0.9%-- that is, if the sum of all components of the product which have at least some GM content adds up to more than 0.9% of the total weight of the product, the product must be labeled as GM.
As more specific traits of obvious benefit to consumers are introduced like some of the new GM soy and canola varieties with healthier oil profiles�ndustry reluctance to label the crop as GM may diminish. The voluntary standard in Canada allows the product to be labeled GM if the producer wishes, just as voluntary GM-free label is allowed. Just as Certified Organic producers willingly accept the greater cost of producing their product to service a specific market, the producers of specialty GM products will have to bear the additional cost of identity preservation for their products--- they won稚 be able to benefit from the scale economies of the mass-commodity handling system.
Epidemiology: It is true that an epidemiologist would need to be able to identify treated and control groups to be able to identify any health effects of GM foods. However, a simple ç”°ontains GMO label would only be effective if the whole collection of genetic engineering technologies and traits were harmful. Critics of the technology often point to the possibility that it might introduce unknown allergens or other unexpected effects. However, each transformation event is individual and unique, so, unless each trait were identified on the label, tracking any effects would be confounded.
Furthermore, critics of GM labeling point out that any new trait in a crop, including those introduced by conventional breeding techniques, might conceivably result in adverse effects (as has happened several times in the past, eg with potatoes and celery). In order to be able to detect the more subtle of these effects by epidemiological studies, are we going to identify each component of foods by crop variety on the label? Clearly, this isn稚 feasible.
Finally, the actions in Europe to restrict the availability of GM foods may have provided a crude control group for epidemiological comparison. That is, in Europe the general population has consumed very little GM food whereas in North America, between two-thirds and three-quarters of all processed foods in grocery stores contain at least one GM ingredient. Still, if there are generic adverse effects of GM foods, none have been serious enough to be discernable by this crude comparison.
Finally, note that fewer than five percent of respondents in surveys spontaneously mention GM content as something they would like to see added to food labels. Conversely, a fairly high percentage of respondents (especially in Europe) say "yes" if asked if they would like to have GM foods labelled. Consider this: consumers can't see any harm in having more information made available to them, not realizing that picking and choosing what goes onto labels may be reflecting a preconceived notion...in this case, that there is a greater reason to be concerned about the process of genetic modification than about, say, what variety of bean is in the canned beans or what regimen of pesticides was applied to the beans, etc.
Sorry for the long-windedness; I hope this helps put the labelling issue in better perspective.
One of the demands frequently made by opponents of GMOs is that products containing them be labeled. The two main justifications usually given for this demand are consumer choice and epidemiology. In the first case, how can an opponent of GM foods avoid them if they don稚 know where they are? In the second case, if there are adverse effects, how will we ever know, if we can稚 differentiate between people who consume GM foods and those who don稚?
Consumer Choice: The usual call for labeling is a simple 田ontains GMO type of notice. While this would allow those who oppose the technology on principle to avoid most of its products (without resorting to buying Certified Organic products), it would fall short of providing any useful health or nutrition information. The position of the Canadian and US governments on this has been that the label requirements will be for pertinent health and safety information. This includes the ingredients, nutritional content/breakdown and safety/health warnings (eg �ay contain nuts?. Because there has never been any evidence of adverse effects from any of the GM crops so far introduced, nor have they (so far) exhibited appreciably different nutritional profiles from their conventional counterparts, no specific mention of these has been required on the label.
Industry is strongly opposed to the ç”°ontains GMO label because they see it as equivalent to a skull and cross-bones. The danger is not so much that consumers would reject the products葉hough that might happen, tooå‚*ut that food processors would move to exclude GM products from their lines in order to avoid having to label them. This is what happened in Europe when a labeling regime was introduced. Even though polls showed that at least two-thirds of consumers would still have continued buying the processed products if they had GM contents, the suppliers of these products realized that none of the customers would refuse to buy the products if the GM elements were eliminated. So there was a lot to gain and nothing to lose for the processors and grocers. The end result is that European consumers now have great difficulty choosing foods with labeled GM content.
It should be noted that the Europeans exempted certain types of products from the labeling requirement. Mostly, these include cheeses produced with chymosin and other food industry products which use GM enzymes or �rocessing aids or GM yeast (bread, beer, wine). Also, there is the problem of detecting GM content in products where the product has been highly refined (oil, starch, sugar). Finally, in any labeling scheme, a threshold must be set. In the EU, the labeling threshold for aggregate GM content is 0.9%-- that is, if the sum of all components of the product which have at least some GM content adds up to more than 0.9% of the total weight of the product, the product must be labeled as GM.
As more specific traits of obvious benefit to consumers are introduced like some of the new GM soy and canola varieties with healthier oil profiles�ndustry reluctance to label the crop as GM may diminish. The voluntary standard in Canada allows the product to be labeled GM if the producer wishes, just as voluntary GM-free label is allowed. Just as Certified Organic producers willingly accept the greater cost of producing their product to service a specific market, the producers of specialty GM products will have to bear the additional cost of identity preservation for their products--- they won稚 be able to benefit from the scale economies of the mass-commodity handling system.
Epidemiology: It is true that an epidemiologist would need to be able to identify treated and control groups to be able to identify any health effects of GM foods. However, a simple ç”°ontains GMO label would only be effective if the whole collection of genetic engineering technologies and traits were harmful. Critics of the technology often point to the possibility that it might introduce unknown allergens or other unexpected effects. However, each transformation event is individual and unique, so, unless each trait were identified on the label, tracking any effects would be confounded.
Furthermore, critics of GM labeling point out that any new trait in a crop, including those introduced by conventional breeding techniques, might conceivably result in adverse effects (as has happened several times in the past, eg with potatoes and celery). In order to be able to detect the more subtle of these effects by epidemiological studies, are we going to identify each component of foods by crop variety on the label? Clearly, this isn稚 feasible.
Finally, the actions in Europe to restrict the availability of GM foods may have provided a crude control group for epidemiological comparison. That is, in Europe the general population has consumed very little GM food whereas in North America, between two-thirds and three-quarters of all processed foods in grocery stores contain at least one GM ingredient. Still, if there are generic adverse effects of GM foods, none have been serious enough to be discernable by this crude comparison.
Finally, note that fewer than five percent of respondents in surveys spontaneously mention GM content as something they would like to see added to food labels. Conversely, a fairly high percentage of respondents (especially in Europe) say "yes" if asked if they would like to have GM foods labelled. Consider this: consumers can't see any harm in having more information made available to them, not realizing that picking and choosing what goes onto labels may be reflecting a preconceived notion...in this case, that there is a greater reason to be concerned about the process of genetic modification than about, say, what variety of bean is in the canned beans or what regimen of pesticides was applied to the beans, etc.
Sorry for the long-windedness; I hope this helps put the labelling issue in better perspective.
