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They are. A lot of products label themselves as "non-GMO" or "non-rBGH" (or whatever it is in milk). Same as the seed companies label the seeds as "non-GMO". It's gotten to more folks these days are selling something for what it doesn't have in it than for what it does. Tells ya something about the food manufacturing business.
Does "organic" equate to "non-GMO"?
Organic is supposed to non-GMO.
Why don't people just assume if it isn't labeled non-GMO or organic it is GMO? That seems to be a far simpler solution.
OpenD--you are still patronizing, don't you get it?
When GMOs came right out of the gate in the mid 90s they were immediately rejected by consumers. Not activists fault, no conspiracy, no organic lobby--just a vague, simple, creepiness towards the process. That's when the biotech industry went undercover, because they didn't want to deal with advertising, consumer education, cumbersome consumer habits, etc.
The FDA requires that there is no substantial difference btw GMO and non-GMO food. Yet the USPTO however requires a substantial difference before issuing a patent to a product! GMO corporations manage to get BOTH contradicting approvals by rotating the same key players in our federal offices, legislative branches, and respective corporate jobs and their affiliated universities.
Yes, they hijacked the universities by pushing grant money into their fields (UH Manoa is at the forefront). Now that's when the freedom of science got sacrificed and the paid scientists were made to argue with activists. The 'you-show-me-your-study-and-I-show-you-mine' game started. The ethical consciousness of GMO corporations is delegated to the P.R. departments. Absent in this were and still are the marketing managers: Nobody is making the GMO soup they brew in any which way palatable to consumers and voters.
No need to demonize a label when doing such a perfect job manipulating our democratic and educational system. Especially with the same lecturing attitude you still demonstrate.
It's all about perspective....
Who is actually winning here? Certainly not average day folks, who are the consumers.
"Tainted Federal Judge just screwed the people of the Big Island -
And he’ll do it again to the people of Maui, who voted to block Dow and Monsanto from continuing GMO/pesticide experiments on their Island.
Read my previous articles (archive here) about Judge Barry Kurren and his wife’s connections to Dow and Monsanto, via The Nature Conservancy and First Hawaiian Bank."
IMHO, GMOs are too new for folks to properly evaluate them.
What's "too new?" They've been on the market for over 20 years already with no credible evidence of harm. Not from the GMOs themselves. This is actually the same recycled argument that was used to attack hybrid corn when it was first released to the public in the 1930s by the University of Kansas.
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I also wonder why many other countries don't allow them to be imported?
Actually the reverse is true. Many countries banned GMOs early on, not based on evidence but simply based on fear of the unknown. Gradually, as the evidence that GMOs do not pose any dangers mounts, countries are beginning to roll those laws back. Japan banned Hawaiian GMO papayas until they had tested them intensely for 7 years, then approved them a couple of years ago. The EU now permits 18 different GMOs, contrary to the common public understanding. Thailand has long had laws banning GMOs, which handcuffs any meaningful research in the country, despite an aching need for developments such as a virus free Green Papaya, which is a staple food in rural areas where people are starving due to the spread of the virus. As a workaround, the government has created a research consortium with other Asian countries to develop GMO crops at a secret location outside the country. If they are successful in their research, how long do you expect their country's ban will last?
Over 1,000 university and private and government and NGO organizations around the world are now working on developing GMO plants and animals and fish and insects and microorganisms for a very wide range of purposes. The technology is not going to go away.
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Originally Posted by the1heat4u
Frankly, I don't entirely trust the FDA. Why is it, that there are many other countries out there banning GMO's, yet America is completely fine with it?
See above... those bans are beginning to fall in the face of overwhelming evidence that they aren't rational.
Also, a major factor operating in the US that is absent elsewhere is that the USDA originally performed the research that developed the technology for the earliest transgenic products and then put it up for public auction. Monsanto bought that technology, for a billion dollars. Is the US government now going to turn around and shut it down? Not a chance.
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So when the bulk of our crops are all taken over with GMO, and people are suffering even more so from disease and illness. Maybe then.... people will see it is a direct result of what we put into our bodies..
Let's just hope, it is not too late.
But that isn't happening, and even to suggest it is happening is merely unsubstantiated hype coming from anti-science activists, which is now attracting substantial funding from the Organic and Natural Food Industries. This is a widely overlooked factor in this dynamic, that there is a large business interest behind convincing the public to buy Big Herbal products instead of Big Pharma products, and to buy "Natural Foods" over "Conventional Foods," despite the higher prices. The anti-GMO campaign in Maui was primarily financed by money from a billionaire Midwest philanthopist who made his wealth selling Natural Foods... despite the fact that Natural Foods is a meaningless label, without Federal definition. Oh, you thought that was a grass roots effort? Yeah, they wanted you to think that.
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Originally Posted by KaraBenNemsi
OpenD--you are still patronizing, don't you get it?
And you are trying to label me with something that is not real, but merely a burp in your thinking. "Don't you get it?" is itself a patronizing phrase, so please check out your own image in the mirror.
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When GMOs came right out of the gate in the mid 90s they were immediately rejected by consumers.
Not so much, no. FavrSavr tomatoes were the first to hit the market, and the first to fail, mostly because consumers didn't like the taste. But try a Rainbow or SunUp papaya today, after 15 years on the market... they're delicious!
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The FDA requires that there is no substantial difference btw GMO and non-GMO food. Yet the USPTO however requires a substantial difference before issuing a patent to a product! GMO corporations manage to get BOTH contradicting approvals by rotating the same key players in our federal offices, legislative branches, and respective corporate jobs and their affiliated universities.
That's a misrepresentation. All it really takes is a single molecule of genetic difference to justify a patent. Basically the development of the Rainbow papaya involved flipping a single genetic switch, which turned on the plant's innate ability to immunize itself. There is no substantial difference with non-GMO papayas, and as Dr. Gonsalves famously said, "It was a papaya before. It's still a papaya after.
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Yes, they hijacked the universities by pushing grant money into their fields (UH Manoa is at the forefront). Now that's when the freedom of science got sacrificed and the paid scientists were made to argue with activists. The 'you-show-me-your-study-and-I-show-you-mine' game started. The ethical consciousness of GMO corporations is delegated to the P.R. departments. Absent in this were and still are the marketing managers: Nobody is making the GMO soup they brew in any which way palatable to consumers and voters.
You conveniently overlook the anti-GMO's dirty little secret... that they rely on fake research and lies to make their case, and continue to cite that fiction even after it has been debunked. The fraudulent Seralini rat tumor study in France that was so thoroughly vilified as phony in 2012 is still being posted daily on Facebook and other social media sites as if it were valid. The reports of Indian farmers committing suicide because their GMO cotton crops failed has also been thoroughly debunked, with the discovery that stories about the widespread farmer suicides in that region were being printed in newspapers 5 years before any GMOs were even available, and despite evidence that farmers are now buying GMO seeds black market if they can't get them through legitimate channels, because the GMO crop yieids are double what conventional varieties yield at harvest. The reason there is no credible research to prove the anti-GMO claims is that there is no such credible research. Just fiction, heaped on fiction, even after the truth is revealed.
And taking pot-shots at at bona fide research by claiming that the desired results are paid for by special interests is the essence of anti-science rhetoric. You've just proven the very point I made which you initially took exception to. But science doesn't work that way. Grants may shape the direction that scientific studies take, of course, but they don't dictate the results.
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No need to demonize a label when doing such a perfect job manipulating our democratic and educational system. Especially with the same lecturing attitude you still demonstrate.
Now, it was definitely paid activism that created the demonization of GMOs. And environmentalist Mark Lynas, one of the founders of the anti-GMO crusade, helped create the playbook for the protest and demonization. But nearly two years ago , Lynas announced at the prestigious Oxford Farming Conference that he had been wrong about GMOs, and that he regretted it.
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I want to start with some apologies. For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.
As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.
So I guess you’ll be wondering—what happened between 1995 and now that made me not only change my mind but come here and admit it? Well, the answer is fairly simple: I discovered science, and in the process I hope I became a better environmentalist.
OpenD, you just regurgitate whatever you can find on the internet.
Now you are throwing the kitchen sink to make yourself feel better when running into iffy territory.
Let's stick with your argument about Hawaiian GMO papayas selling in Japan now: No, they don't. I spoke with the HI Dept of Ag a while back and they told me verbatim that besides a single delivery of a few cases of Hawaii GMO papaya was sent to COSTCO Japan. And one for a free food tasting. That was it. The grocery market chains don't see a market because in Japan GMO stickers are mandatory.
Now to circumvent this the Hawaiian Papaya Farmers Organization got a grant to explore shipping their GMO papayas as a mere ingredient for fruit salads and such. Then the mandatory GMO labeling would not be needed. Catch is that then the 'Hawaiian' name also is omitted. Therefore any marketing benefits are gone, because the more expensive Hawaiian GMO papaya is competing with the generic cheaper GMO papayas from the Philippines.
So the Hawaiian GMO papaya is NOT selling to Japan. Even the biggest buyer of Hawaiian papaya ( CalavoGrowers.com) is not advertising GMO papaya on their website--just the previous crossbred non-GMO one. Dr Gonsalves didn't invent GMO papaya either--he merely used a Monsanto patented process and therefore got into a legal nightmare with them.
This, my friend, ain't as pretty as the picture you want to paint. And also a reason why the police department is looking into possible insurance fraud by the owners when this supposedly 'vandalizing' of papaya fields happens.
OpenD, you just regurgitate whatever you can find on the internet.
Now you are throwing the kitchen sink to make yourself feel better when running into iffy territory.
Funny how I want to talk about how anti-GMO laws can't stand, while you keep wanting to talk about me, in violation of the TOS.
Sorry, I'm not playing.
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Let's stick with your argument about Hawaiian GMO papayas selling in Japan now: No, they don't. I spoke with the HI Dept of Ag a while back and they told me verbatim that besides a single delivery of a few cases of Hawaii GMO papaya was sent to COSTCO Japan. And one for a free food tasting. That was it. The grocery market chains don't see a market because in Japan GMO stickers are mandatory.
This is just bogus misinformation... not only is it unverifiable hearsay, it's also contradicted by published facts. In the first year after Japan approved them for sale, over $1.3 million dollars worth of Hawaiian papayas were sold to Japan, about 16% of Hawai'i's total papaya exports, according to this 2012 article, and sales have gone up since.
Dr Gonsalves didn't invent GMO papaya either--he merely used a Monsanto patented process and therefore got into a legal nightmare with them.
Also a bogus reinterpretation of what really happened.
The real story is well documented. Dr. Gonsalves is a native born Hawaiian who was a virologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, who was given a small grant from U of H to develop a papaya which would resist the Ringspot Virus. RSV was decimating the industry, because it makes the fruit unsalable, and the small farmers who make up the bulk of the industry were starting to lose their farms. The grant was so small he only had one part-time assistant. And under the educational research guidelines of the day, since it was a non-commercial product and the seeds were distributed free of charge by U of H, it was believed no license was required for use of the "gene gun" to insert the desired gene modification.
Under US patent rules, Gonsalves invented the "UH Rainbow" variety. The gene gun was merely the tool used. Later Monsanto claimed licensing rights on use of the technique, as part of a broad campaign to protect its patent, but eventually the granted that license at no cost. It was an unexpected wrinkle, not a legal nightmare.
Every agricultural program generates waste, including overripe fruit, fruit that has suffered bird or insect damage, fruit that has fallen on the ground and started to rot. I distinctly remember picking up a load of "organic compost" at the Hilo dump several years ago that seemed half full of Noni fruit that had not fully broken down in the composting process. I wondered at the time if it had come from that Noni farm in Kalapana that the lava had just burned up. It was well fermented, full of natural alcohol, and I wondered if the load was flammable?
In any case, the biofuel plant to turn all kinds of farm waste to fuel was already in the early planning stages all the way back then.
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This, my friend, ain't as pretty as the picture you want to paint. And also a reason why the police department is looking into possible insurance fraud by the owners when this supposedly 'vandalizing' of papaya fields happens.
What, like the eco-terrorists wearing de-con masks and white biohazard suits with the labels "Genetic Decontamination Crew" on their backs as they decapitated papaya trees, which were reprinted over and over on anti-GMO sites as if their criminal destruction was somehow admirable? The anti-GMO folks used it as PR, but now you're trying to say it didn't happen? Here's a reprint of one of those photos, under the headline "Hawaii SEED Wants to Destroy Papaya Farmers" on gmo | HawaiiFarmersDaughter
Sorry, but your picture isn't as accurate, or as believable as you wish to paint.
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The GMO stuff isn't selling, tasty or not.
Sure it is. I buy some every time I visit a farmer's market, as do many others, because they are lower cost than the "organic" ones, not to mention being a lot prettier than the ones with all the virus blotches. And the export figures also say you're wrong. The GMO varieties now make up 80% of what's sold.
Oops, OpenD probably found a subject where google is not helping him find answers. Get back to us when you read about all angles of this complex issue. Ignoring this issue may be very costly for all of us. What are you going to do when your crop get cross polinated with your neighbor's GMO crop and you are not able to collect and replant seeds due to patents? Get your head out of the sand and see that the only studies out there are financed by the co's promoting and profiting from the GMO. The is no scientific evidence that they are bad because your corrupt officials are in bed with the big agricultural co's. This reminds me of the big oil fighting to keep the lead in gasoline some decades ago.
Why don't people just assume if it isn't labeled non-GMO or organic it is GMO? That seems to be a far simpler solution.
Can't do that, viper. A non-GMO conventional farmed crop is far from getting an organic certification (which is the base process for getting a non-GMO certification sticker). Organic certification is also a rather shoddy process with lots of questionable methods.
80% of officially counted US farm production is GMO. But this is driven by the massive mechanized mono cropping of sugar beets, cotton, corn, and soy. Not including wheat, barley, fruits, potatoes, grapes, legumes, nuts, etc, which are still non-GMO and represent the bulk of small family farms in the U.S. The quoted 80% are mostly large scale corporate farm enterprise harvests.
The claim that GMO would be in most US foods is because companies are adding GMO high fructose corn or beet syrup to pretty much everything. Not only sodas, but beef jerky, salad sauces, baby food and even shampoos and candles (not supposed to eat them though:-).
So the conventional non-GMO farmer gets lumped in with the GMO food suppliers. Not being 'organic' labeled he/she gets punished because despite the cheaper price their crops are wrongly associated with the consumer dreaded GMO suspicion.
Currently only zucchini, crooked squash, and a new specific potato is GMO. Along your argument those three should be simply labeled as GMO as they are the minority in the produce section. But I guarantee you that this will not happen under this GMO loving president or his GMO puppet Vilsack being the secretary of agriculture.
I don't know - seems to me in this world with such high life expectancy (one could argue it is too high), it would seem GMO food to help starving world populations would be a good thing. Seems like they would rather eat a bug resistant fruit rather than no fruit at all.
If people started dropping dead after eating Papaya then I could see the argument more clearly. Again, with life expectancy so high this organic fad is just something I don't really get.
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