“GMO labeling: Trick or treat”

Here’s a great piece from Grist just in time for the season on I-522. Nathanael Johnson interviews himself about the pesky initiative that is getting mired in the Attorney General’s office due to the naysayers illegal money dumping . To wit:

Labeling GM food fails to identify a genuine hazard.

I think that the actual hazard associated with the GM foods is somewhere between negligible and non-existent. But that’s the point: Labeling would help people let go of their inflated perceptions of risk.

But it’s confusing! People will assume GM food is bad if they see what looks like a warning label .

Nah. We have other examples where the government has required a label that can be interpreted subjectively: Orange juice has to be labeled “Fresh,” or “From Concentrate”; foods are labeled by their country of origin; farmed fish in Washington must be marked as such. None of these labels has caused panic.

Labeling will drive up prices.

I thought this piece hit the nail on the head: Yes, some prices will surely go up as food processors replace commodity ingredients with non-GM variants, but the original, commodity food should continue to be available as well.

Full story HERE .