I probably wouldn’t have noticed if there hadn’t been two of them, but there I was fixing dinner, two cans of food (Tuttorosso tomatoes and Pearls black olives) before me on the counter. Both sported a little green label that I couldn’t read without my glasses but on which were printed the following words: “Non-GMO Project Verfied.” What’s this? A GMO label? I thought we weren’t allowed to have those. But no, it’s apparently fine to label your food products as long as it’s not mandatory to do so.
Needless to say, manufacturers of GMO food aren’t likely to print labels on them saying that they contain the DNA of other organisms, but that doesn’t stop companies that market non-GMO food from saying so on their own labels. Which is how I discovered that my favorite brand of inexpensive but good tomatoes as well as a leading brand of olives are non-GMO. Now that I know that this labeling system exists, I’ll be looking for it on other foods (if only we could have it in the produce section).
Still, it’s a start and lots of brands have gotten their products certified Non-GMO. You can see for yourself on the Non-GMO Project web site — over 35,000 products from over 2,500 brands.
Meanwhile, it’s encouraging to see this kind of pro-active effort on the part of at least some food producers. If you consider that you are what you eat, knowing what you’re eating makes sense. Thanks to the Non-GMO Project and all the participating food companies for making that a little bit easier.
sticker design
This reminds me a bit of when the record companies voluntarily put a explicit warning on CDs being sold. A designer friend at the RIAA said she worked hard to make the sticker look cool, so people would see it as something good.
This is different, though, in that the Non GMO folks are pointing out something good to begin with. The label still looks cool, though. I think a similar design approach was used.
As a designer, I appreciate that they made the NON part big in their sticker, and at the top rather than beside the GMO part. It’s a small thing, but I think it helps customers with a somewhat difficult, label-scanning, quick decision.
The website says they can’t guarantee 100% GMO free products, but do offer a testing program:
“What does “Non-GMO Project Verified seal” mean?
The verification seal indicates that the product bearing the seal has gone through our verification process. Our verification is an assurance that a product has been produced according to consensus-based best practices for GMO avoidance:
We require ongoing testing of all at-risk ingredients—any ingredient being grown commercially in GMO form must be tested prior to use in a verified product.
We use an Action Threshold of 0.9%. This is in alignment with laws in the European Union (where any product containing more than 0.9% GMO must be labeled). Absence of all GMOs is the target for all Non-GMO Project Standard compliant products. Continuous improvement practices toward achieving this goal must be part of the Participant’s quality management systems.
After the test, we require rigorous traceability and segregation practices to be followed in order to ensure ingredient integrity through to the finished product.
For low-risk ingredients, we conduct a thorough review of ingredient specification sheets to determine absence of GMO risk.
Verification is maintained through an annual audit, along with onsite inspections for high-risk products.”
Scientific American
Even before Gregor Mendel indulged in plant hybridization, humans have been modifying the plant world around them.
“The human race has been selectively breeding crops, thus altering plants’ genomes, for millennia. Ordinary wheat has long been strictly a human-engineered plant; it could not exist outside of farms, because its seeds do not scatter. For some 60 years scientists have been using “mutagenic” techniques to scramble the DNA of plants with radiation and chemicals, creating strains of wheat, rice, peanuts and pears that have become agricultural mainstays. The practice has inspired little objection from scientists or the public and has caused no known health problems.”
There is no question that science is largely in favor of it with implicit built-in cautions. GMOs R&D on earth is likely a necessary precursor to space travel.
This is an excellent pro and con article…Full text:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-truth-about-genetically-modified-food/
How Did Politics Get Into My Science?
I never understood how people’s political persuasion determine their views on science.
Not to mention
Not to mention how people’s religious far right’s persuasion determine their views on science….
And furthermore
The both of you may have your fun, but it’s not science or religion that are the problem here. ‘Science’ is not a god or natural law that is known and can be referred to as the final decree on all things. Neither does ‘Science’ agree that genetically modified food is good for us. Or even bad for us. The safety of GMOs has barely been tested and is hardly decided.
Also, for the record, they were not inserting fish dna into plant organisms in Mendel’s day.
Third, there is the issue of crop contamination and the suicidal seeds and other unnatural things connected with GMOs. Although I would prefer that the food designers didn’t make them at all, I’d at least like to have a choice whether to eat them or not. That way, those of us who don’t trust them don’t have to buy them, while people who don’t care can buy all they want.
Ok, have at me, or my argument at least, hammer and tongs (pipets and petri dishes). 😉
The most self-correcting discipline known
I have never read any science that refers to themselves as “the final decree on all things.” That’s a mythology. Science is the most self-correcting discipline known to humans.
Hybridization in Mendel’s day involved strands of DNA or RNA. Of course he didn’t know that then.
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/hybridizationhybridizing :: forms “a double-stranded nucleic acid of two single strands of DNA or RNA, or one of each, by allowing the base pairs of the separate strands to form complementary bonds. It fuses two cells of different genotypes into a hybrid cell.”
What I said was “There is no question that science is largely in favor of it with implicit built-in cautions.” The Scientific American link I provided does not claim that all scientists agree, bit the majority of them do.
The link to the SA article includes this; “David Williams, say, “A lot of naive science has been involved in pushing this technology,” he says. “Thirty years ago we didn’t know that when you throw any gene into a different genome, the genome reacts to it. But now anyone in this field knows the genome is not a static environment. Inserted genes can be transformed by several different means, and it can happen generations later.” The result, he insists, could very well be potentially toxic plants slipping through testing. Williams concedes that he is among a tiny minority of biologists raising sharp questions about the safety of GM crops.”
So even Mendel and other early biologists were throwing genes “into a different genome,(where) the genome reacts to it.”
In that case...
Climate change may not be happening
Abortions may cause breast cancer
Vaccines may cause autism
The earth may be 6000 years old
Etc.
Science doesn’t really give sh*t what your personal views about Monsanto are.
Live and let die
Would the owners and employees of Monsanto feed GMO foodstuff to their children? If Monsanto et al did not feed GMOs to their children then why would they feed the other children of the world the same?
There probably isn’t a way to determine this.
In some way, the GMOs issue is similar to chemtrails. If these evil elites are so hellbent on destroying people by disseminating poison throughout our food-chain and in our atmosphere how do they protect their loved ones from the very same poison they are intentionally putting into everyone else’s bodies?
Whatever this division is of live and let die, it is driven, in part, by a laymen lack of scientific principals and an accusatory mistrust of scientists.
Another feature of the problem is that in more recent times religions (and other believers) are accelerating what they believe is their place and role in science as they encroach and insinuate themselves into scientific disciplines that they are ill equipped to handle. At the same time, the conservative believers denounce, criticize, and censure science.
In short, humans are a goddamned mess.