GMO Labeling or How To Best ProtectThe Right To Misinform Consumers.

It's been a while since I posted, so I thought I would dust off blogger and add another 1AM missive.  It get's harder to write about this stuff because it's already been said before and also there are now a respectable number of subject matter experts who are finally starting to write about food and ag issues.

What follows is a story about proposed GMO labeling legislation, one person's intro to that story on G+, and my comment on both.  It is not necessary to read the story.  You could even skip the intro to the story, but you may lose some of the context of my comments...

From +Malthus John 

The bipartisan legislation would require clear labels for genetically engineered whole foods and processed foods, including fish and seafood. The measure would direct the FDA to write new labeling standards that are consistent with U.S. labeling standards and international standards.

Sixty-four countries around the world already require the labeling of GE foods, including all the member nations of the European Union, Russia, Japan, China, Australia and New Zealand.

“This legislation is supported by a broad coalition of consumer groups, businesses, farmers, fishermen and parents who all agree that consumers deserve more – not less – information about the food they buy.”

According to surveys, more than 90 percent of Americans support the labeling of genetically engineered foods. In fact, many consumers are surprised to learn that GE foods are not already labeled.

Thanks +Bernie Sanders & Barbara Boxer!

Here is the story about the bill that Bernie Sanders(whom I like) and Barbara Boxer(whom I also like) have cosponsored

And here are my comments on the whole matter from my g+ acct:

 It's not because you want to know or that you want a choice, it's that you think there's a difference.  People who already made up their mind based on whatever misinformation they've bought into, probably already buy organic anyway.  This isn't for them.  This proposed legislation is for the minds of the uninformed consumers that the anti-gmo activists want to pollute with unjustified fear and misinformation.

The fact of the matter is that for all intents and purposes, there is no difference between, for instance, corn that is gmo and non-gmo.  For the consumer, there is no difference, but you want to scare them into thinking there might be.  

Anything approved to be on the market has already had allergenicity and toxicology studies validating it's safety, but no amount of studies will ever be enough for the anti-science, anti-gmo activist.  

It's the same as the conspiracy theorist who believes Sandy Hook was faked or the creationist that can never see enough evidence to convince them that evolution is real.  

You are just like them.

Scapegoat Activism.

I was about to go to bed when I saw an article being promoted by @HuffPostFood on Twitter that said, 'the dark side of soda'.  Curious, I clicked on the article and discovered it was yet another ridiculous piece from Michael F. Jacobson of the ill-named Center for Science in the Public Interest.

The article blames soda for amputations, impotence, and painful dentistry.  Clearly, this is meant to shock people.  I don't know why I expected anything reasonable from that organization.

We live in a time where we can have as much of whatever it is that we want.  With that, we should be mindful of overdoing it; eating too much(guilty), drinking too much, et cetera.  Anything consumed in excess will carry with it certain negative consequences.  Anything.  

Knowing that, should we proceed on a route of zero tolerance, with the logic that if we can't have too much of something then we shouldn't have any of it or should we proceed with the totality of the diet in mind and try to engage in all things in moderation?

Jacobson talks about how we used to enjoy 6.5 or 10 fl oz servings of Coke or Pepsi, but now we have 20 fl oz and up of these beverages and... well, you know... amputations.  He goes on to mention Big Soda, by which he means Coca Cola and Pepsico.  He doesn't mention smaller companies that make the same sort of beverage to sell in organic groceries... 

He goes on to promote an animated short called The Real Bears, which is an attack against the aforementioned Big Soda.  Once again this should be of little surprise to people.

Michael F. Jacobson and the CSPI commonly engage in what I call, 'Scapegoat Activism'.  You see, they have built a big, expensive institution that must be constantly fed with new members and donors.  'All things in moderation' is not a very good recruiting tool, but fear, hysteria, and misinformation are.  So what they do is pick a villain, put the word 'Big' in front of it to signal to you that this is a big, profit hungry corporation that not only doesn't care about you, but hopes to separate you from your money while killing you, and then blame all of society's ills on that one villain.

The villains are things like conventionally grown fruits and veggies, Happy Meal kid's toys, food coloring, and of course, big soda.

They employ a couple methods for scaring people to their side.  One is through giving you some information, but not enough to dissuade you from becoming irrationally afraid.  For instance, they'll have an article talking about the evils of caramel coloring and how it will lead to cancer, but they'll leave out the information about how much of that coloring you would need to ingest to maybe get cancer and how that number means you could never drink enough cola to get there.  Two is through using the same logic that Bush used as rational for a whole manor of policies.  It's the whole, 'if A = B and B = C, then A = C' crap.  Oversimplification would be a vast understatement.

The problem with that method is that food doesn't really work that way.  Our diets are fungible, meaning that we have a certain number  of calories/sugar/sodium and the sources of those things will change from day to day.  You can spend a lot of calories on certain things and still be ok so long as you make room for it.  This is how Michael Phelps could eat 12,000 calories a day and weigh 165lbs and not 1,000lbs, because he offsets the caloric intake with exercise.  It's how that one guy was able to eat a Big Mac every day for 25 years and not be fat.  There is absolutely no data showing that people got amputations, impotence, or cavities from soda alone.  It's the totality of the diet that matters, not a short term indulgence, and not one item in the diet.

He needs new villains to drum up membership, donors, and credibility so more people believe him and so he can publish another article with a new villain to start the process over again.  That, my friends, is Scapegoat Activism.  Don't let yourself get played.

Be Aggressive.

Once credibility is established, and in the absence of a subject matter expert to correct the record, people will believe what they're told.

Think about that for a minute.

In the 80's and 90's, you saw this with the tobacco industry.  Tobacco lobbyist would come out against whatever scientific study came out and you really didn't hear anything from the scientists until papers started getting read in Congress that showed executive's efforts to cover up health risks.

Similarly, Activists and activist profiteers - those who latch on to activist causes for profit - like Michael Pollan, have the audiences ear; an audience that serves as a blank slate and recruitment tool for the activists. Of course, the activist profiteers need those fresh faces to sell books and book speaking engagements.  So these people build the perception of credibility through the lack of other adults in the room questioning them and setting these activists and profiteers straight.

Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with being an activist or being a profiteer.  The problem is when the profit comes from misinformation, like in the case of the tobacco lobby or Michael Pollan.  The problem is when activists use misinformation to recruit more people.

"[Nutritional Science] is kind of where surgery was in the 1650s. Really promising, really interesting ... but, would you let them operate on you?" - Michael Pollan, Speech at Sydney's Opera House.

For science to progress, for reason to move forward alongside our debates about food, there must be an answer to that above statement.  How many times do you think that got repeated as people got into buses and cars and headed home or to dinner that evening?  How tragically ironic is it that one of the people advocating for and romanticizing subsistence level farming put down modern nutritional science as being too simple... not advanced enough?

We need to be more agressive in promoting science.  We can't just set the facts out on the back porch like milk in a saucer in hopes that science starved kittens will lap it up.  Those kittens are on someone else's porch getting an earful about how bad your milk is, and when they do come around, it will be to make some snarky, matter-of-fact statement about how wrong you are before sauntering off with their tails wafting through the breeze.

"There's a wisdom beyond what people tell us, we have just stopped listening to our bodies."                      - Michael Pollan, Speech at Sydney's Opera House.

This is actually a variation of the God of the Gaps argument made in Creationism.  If they don't have all the answers we need right now, then we must not accept any of the answers they have and be skeptical of everything they say.

You don't see this in other areas of science. In astronomy, you had Carl Sagan, who had facts on his side and credibility.  After him, came people like Michio Koku and Neil deGrasse Tyson, who I would consider to be our generation's Carl Sagan.

For those on #agchat and #foodchat on twitter who would advocate being more diplomatic, I would like to add that Mr. Pollan's speaking engagement in Sydney was most likely a paid gig.  The people he sent out into the world with that message - either directly or indirectly - paid to hear it.  So if people will pay to hear that message, how far do you really think being diplomatic gets you on the free internet?

And it's not just Pollan, either.  We have activist organizations, who through their activism, have become profiteers.  You have Michael Jacobson and his Center for Science in the Public Interest.  You have Jeffrey Smith and his Institute for Responsible Technology.  You also have the somewhat misleading named, Union of Concerned Scientists.  I could go on and on.

We need to share resources, use our best professional groups and get out there and fight the misinformation.  We have groups like the International Food Information Council and the Institute of Food Technologists that we can network in and find people to do media appearances through.  We can appear with one of these groups when they end up on Real Time with Bill Maher, The Daily Show, Hardball, et cetera.  We can invest a little more time to social media by posting tweets about what we do as farmers, or plant geneticists, or food scientists, or food science professionals.  We can put out blogs, youtube videos, and podcasts to broadcast the truth about science.  Hell, one or two of use may actually get booked for paid speaking engagements.

But that would be offense, and the conventional wisdom among too many is to not be argumentative, to to sink to their level.  What we get with that strategy is what we currently have now, a landscape dominated by activists and their profiteering hangers on, who say whatever they feel is right, regardless of whether it's true.  Their numbers grow, and science shrinks.  Hysteria soon becomes fact.  Get off the bench. Be aggressive.

Story about Pollan's speech in Sydney.

Recap of Jon Entine's speech at IFT 2012.

A Lack of the Killer Tomatoes.

I was initially very happy when I saw this story in the New York Times.


The story talks about how plant geneticists cracked the code on why red tomatoes seemed more bland.  It was fascinating as well as exciting, because they now knew what gene was turned off because of the red ripening mutation... which means they could simply turn on the flavor producing gene, in theory.


What really bummed me out about this article was the following sentences; 'But were the genetically engineered tomatoes more flavorful? Because Department of Agriculture regulations forbid the consumption of experimental produce, no one tasted them.'


I'm all for regulation of food and ag, as I've posted about before, but at a certain point, we have to shed this pre-millennial thinking that scientists are reckless and don't know what they are doing.  At this point, I think plant geneticists and bio-engineers have the ability to make a strong hypothesis about potential gene outcomes, such that they may take a bite out of a fucking tomato.


This thinking leads into the next self defeating paragraph in the article; 'And, Dr. Giovannoni says, do not look for those genetically engineered tomatoes at the grocery store. Producers would not dare to make such a tomato for fear that consumers would reject it.'


So what, don't even bother?  Why would the public reject it?  I think the doctor is referring to the anti-science activists that have romanticized any kind of old-timey ag of yore where poor, perpetually underfed subsistence level farmers broke their ass to make a crop that we would return to the grocery store for quality reasons.


Why not educate throughout the process?  Why not put up the varying steps on YouTube with annotations on why each step is done and have links to accompanying notes for background reading?  We need much more educational outreach, because clearly the activists... the 'Anti's' are growing their numbers every day with a steady stream of misinformation.  Shying away from progress in this world for fear that we may be misunderstood is a cop-out.


Imagine if that story ended with them taking a bite out of that tomato and noting that it tasted much better...  Would it mean we would see them in the store next year without any safety validation?  No, but it would take a step towards dulling some of the anti-scientific, conspiratorial rhetoric out there.

Nanny Nanny, Boo Boo.

 First, please read NPR's story about New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's large sugary drink ban, then read my response.

 Health is relative to the person, not relative to the food. Let me repeat that: HEALTH IS RELATIVE TO THE PERSON, NOT RELATIVE TO THE FOOD. 

Too many calories are saved as fat. Too much sugar can lead to insulin problems. I know diabetic people that drink a minimum amt of pop or even none, and I know perfectly healthy, normal, people that drink a ton of Mtn Dew. HFCS is no different than sugar, which is the whole reason coke/Pepsi are able to use it instead of cane/beet sugar. 

I DO NOT support this because it's not going to work and it's too difficult to enforce. This sort of legislation is the exact sort of thing that the right cites when giving examples of left wing over-reach. It doesn't work, for one. This will amount to a tax on these drinks and we have seen that such measures do not impact levels of obesity. Why? Because people will just drink twice as much pop when they get home or eat more calories. 

Another problem is how can you possibly enforce this? Are regulators going to set up Cops In Shops style stings? What about people from outside of the city that purchase a big drink and bring it into NYC? Will their drinks be confiscated... or dumped out as some beat cop is writing out a ticket? This is nothing but a plan to shame people, which only serves to alienate them more and keep them inside where they shouldn't be if they are already way overweight. I know my progressive friends mean well, but you are going about this the wrong way and creating a group of people even more ignorant of science who shun ANYTHING that has an industry behind it.

Wonky Tonk

 Mark Bittman surrogate Ezra Klein devoted his Wonkbook writing today to the issue of animal antibiotics.  For those unaware, Klein is an exceptional policy wonk and something of a subject matter expert on politics.  I get his Wonkbook updates emailed to me daily.

I wrote about the need for more Subject Matter Experts a month and a half ago, but I was specific about the SME's needing to speak from their own area of expertise.  This is where I have a problem with Ezra Klein's Wonkbook entry.  Ezra IS something of a foodie and has written about experiences with Haute Cuisine in the past, but Ezra is not by any means a regular writer of, or expert in, food & ag issues.

He mentions how 70% of all antibiotics go towards animals, which I am not disputing.  I would say... as I have in the past that there is a simple explanation for this.  There are about 315,000,000 people in this country... but over a billion head of livestock.  So while 70% seems like an alarming number at first glance, it's entirely reasonable that since animals out number us more than 3 to 1 that most of the antibiotics goes towards animals.

Ezra went on to very matter-of-factly wax on about how animals are all 'stacked on top of one another'.  While this can be true for chicken, we aren't stacking animals or crowding them nearly as full as is made out to be true in the media.  It's counterproductive to cram animals tightly together(chickens notwithstanding) because the stress will cause illness and negatively impact rate of gain.

Antibiotic use is a hotly debated issue, but I haven't seen any evidence that we are eating the antibiotics that the animals eat, as Ezra Klein asserts.  I haven't even seen credible evidence that animal antibiotics contribute to antibiotic resistance in humans.  Again, it would be foolhardy to give antibiotics, therapeutic or not, to animals when it will still be in their system at slaughter.  It's a waste of antibiotics, and besides, USDA regulations require a minimum withdrawal period before animals can be harvested.  That number is different depending on the medication.

Also... don't people cook their meat?  Other than steaks, are people eating rare chicken or rare hamburgers?  How else would antibiotic resistant bacteria make it from the animal to you?

I'm still a fan of Ezra Klein, but I just wish that people would stick to their area of expertise or at least do more homework than reading Bittman's blog or Michael Pollan's books. We have many great colleges with awesome food/ag science departments that a man of Ezra Klein's notoriety could easily access.

[The number of head of livestock in this post was a loose estimate, and if anything, is probably very low]

Mecca Flakes

 So we have several companies that make corn flakes.  Hundreds of workers are responsible for this breakfast classic that has been a part of the American breakfast for many decades.

What if I propose a rule saying that any company that employs a Muslim man or woman must put a symbol on their boxes when they worked on the line that produced that box of cereal?

Presumably, we've already done the same background checks as we have for every other employee.  The employee has received many hours of food safety, GMP, bio security, and other basic company/HR training.  The employee has also received the same on the job training that any other line worker gets and is monitored closely for a period of time after he/she is trained.

"But still.... how do we know that he/she won't.... you know???  I'm concerned for my family... I should have a choice between corn flakes made by friendly white people and ... you know...  Look, I know they're not ALL bad, but... you know... I've heard things.  A few of them have been known to be bad in the past... and well... I don't want to take any chances."

Would this bother you?  Would you be outraged?  Would you think it was a load of crap that the person proposing such a rule would hide behind 'choice' when we all know they're motivation is either fear or misinformation?

Suppose this rule went into effect and several groups boycotted the companies that manufactured these 'Mecca Flakes' as they will call them.  Pretty soon, those companies will get rid of any Muslim employees and a general panic may be stirred up about the role of Muslims in out society, despite all assurances of safety and all calls for sanity and for reason.

Now, replace the word Muslim with GMO.

"Oh Sam, that's different!"

Bullshit.  The traits of one worker on one line in one factory that hammers out thousands of boxes of cornflakes a day is NO different than one gene in a plant that produces corn in a field that produces many thousand of bushels.

Do you think it's wrong to require a company to disclose it's Muslim employees?  Good.

"But what about choice?"

'What's the difference?', I say.  In both cases their safety has been verified and their performance thoroughly analyzed.  In both cases, a non Subject Matter Expert stirs up fear and misinformation, recruiting others that are ignorant about the issues to call for labeling so they have a 'choice'.

Labeling of GMO comes from two agendas: 1. I don't know enough about science to know this is safe, I'm afraid and fear drives my choices or 2. I want more people to be afraid and stirred up about this and with GMO labeling, we will have something specific to boycott so we can drive the technology out of the market altogether.

Remember when Rush Limbaugh was trying to get people to vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Presidential Primaries?  He wasn't doing so for any genuine reasons(sorry Ditto Heads), he knew that the GOP had a strong campaign ready to go against her,  The Anti-GMO activists know that they can drive mass hysteria IF there is something to point at and be hysterical about. 

I don't support labeling because:

1. Safety has already been verified.

2. It IS the same commodity -  Corn is corn & soy is soy

3. USDA Organic already has guarantees for being GMO free

4. I want to take a stand against runaway activism that preys on the ignorance and fear of others to get what they want.