Susan K. Finston has written an op-ed piece on GMO products and labeling in many places, including the Fresno Bee, "FDA shouldn't order costly GMO labels". I read it in the Duluth News Tribune was part of one the DNT's Pro and Con pairings. See https://secure.forumcomm.com/?publisher_ID=36&article_id=236256. It was published in many newspapers across the country on 2012-07-07. The DNT published only two letters on her article, both in opposition. One was mine that was titled by the editor as "Lack of information spells doom for free markets – and possibly people". See https://secure.forumcomm.com/?publisher_ID=36&article_id=237319. The text is :
Free markets are disappearing, and it is free-market proponents who are taking them away.
The classic definition of a free market is:
Many buyers and many sellers.
Both buyers and sellers are free to enter and leave the market.
Both buyers and sellers have all the information they need to make an advantageous transaction.
All costs are covered in the transaction; that is, there are no externalities.
In this letter I want to cover a third point: all the information needed. This was ignored by Susan K. Finston in her Pro/Con commentary, “FDA shouldn’t order costly GMO labels just to satisfy scientific illiterates,” which was published in the News Tribune on July 7.
The top story on an online search for “GMO deaths” is about sudden cattle deaths at a small ranch in Texas. However, it was hybrid grass that produced cyanide after a couple of drought years that caused the deaths. If a hybrid grass can do this, how do we know that a GMO grass won’t do the same?
As to be expected, most of the hits led to “sensationalist” sites, those with a cause; they only repeated stories from elsewhere. I added, “Union of Concerned Scientists” to my search and found a much more credible report: “Environmental Effects of Genetically Modified Food Crops — Recent Experiences,” by Margaret Mellon and Jane Rissler, writing for the Union of Concerned Scientists website.
“No major human health problems have emerged in connection with genetically modified food products,” Mellon and Rissler reported. But a company put a Brazil nut gene into soybeans to increase the latter’s nutritional quality. Experiments showed that people allergic to Brazil nuts were also allergic to the altered soybeans.
Some allergic reactions are fatal. Would you rather eat foods you know don’t give you a reaction? Or would you like being surprised by a fatal ingredient? Labeling is important!
