Dear Californian organic food enthusiasts:
I, too, prefer to know which food is genetically modified and which isn’t. So what I do to accomplish this objective is to inform myself via a medium commonly known as “the internet”.
I believe that if we give heavily armed people the power to restrict food supply if a producer didn’t receive their stamp of approval, then in the end you will not have the healthiest and most passionate food suppliers dominating the market, but those who spend the bulk of their time greasing politicians in Sacramento to attain oligopoly if not monopoly powers.
Isn’t the example of the FDA on the federal level proof enough that this is always the course things take?
As a matter of fact, did you know that the FDA actively restricts producers from highlighting the fact that their food is non-GMO?
The labeling matter is further complicated because the FDA has maintained a tough stance for food makers who don’t use genetically engineered ingredients and want to promote their products as an alternative. The agency allows manufacturers to label their products as not genetically engineered as long as those labels are accurate and do not imply that the products are therefore more healthful.
The agency warned the dairy industry in 1994 that it could not use “Hormone Free” labeling on milk from cows that are not given engineered hormones, because all milk contains some hormones.
It has sent a flurry of enforcement letters to food makers, including B&G Foods, which was told it could not use the phrase “GMO-free” on its Polaner All Fruit strawberry spread label because GMO refers to genetically modified organisms and strawberries are produce, not organisms.
It told the maker of Spectrum Canola Oil that it could not use a label that included a red circle with a line through it and the words “GMO,” saying the symbol suggested that there was something wrong with genetically engineered food.
Why is it that so few healthy food advocates and environmentalists ever throw all their support behind abolishing all those dumb-ass government programs that are at the root of the problems they claim to be concerned with? Why is it that most of them spend the bulk of their time to advocate slapping on more government regulations, more power to the state?
In my opinion it’s because deep down they’re not concerned about those problems, but rather about expanding state powers under the guise of supporting a popular cause, or just in general being part of a seemingly simple and quick solution to manage their own anxiety about a problem rather than the actual problem itself. “Give the guys with guns and prisons more powers and they’ll fix it somehow. DONE. NEXT.”
At least I haven’t recently seen many environmentalists advocate the abandonment of taxi cab regulations, of the forced funding of roads via taxation, of “free” (=tax-funded) water supply, or of the implicit subsidization of fossil fuels via troops in the middle east; all things that would actually attack the root causes the things they claim to be oh so concerned with.
No, all they can ever think of is to give the very people who are screwing up the environment most even more powers to supposedly fix what they’re breaking.
California Prop 37 is yet another manifestation of this mode of “thinking”.