Food production is a complicated, messy system. Labeling is easy to call for, but hard to actually work out. But the interesting thing about this whole labeling fuss is that it has practically nothing to do with the food itself; not with it’s safety, or it’s taste, or it’s quality.
Labeling proponents are GMO opponents, plain and simple. They hope the label will scare people away from the technology, and kill it, because they don’t like things that aren’t natural. They’d don’t like the products and processes that produce profits for big companies. These values are neither good nor bad, but they are values…feelings…the subjective emotions at the heart of this whole debate. And those deeply held values are not going to go away.
Which is why companies at all levels of the food production system – from the seed companies and the raw material processors to the retail product manufacturers and the food stores themselves – should support GM labeling and thereby defuse the whole distracting debate on which their opponents have staked their case. With a little courage and foresight, the food industry could begin to remove this costly impediment to the application of a body of knowledge that could make them lots of money, and do hundreds of millions of people a lot of good.
Read the full, original article: GM food labeling will be complicated, but industry should support it
