Oregonian editorial: ‘No, thanks’ to Oregon’s GMO labeling measure

Oregonians “place a priority on personal freedom and individual choice in how we live our lives,” gushes the website supporting the campaign to disparage genetically engineered foods through mandatory labeling. And because we Oregonians are such rugged individualists, the reasoning goes, we must jettison a system that provides clear and simple options for consumers who don’t like genetic engineering and replace it with one that will mislead the less-informed and place a disproportionate financial burden on the poor. No, thanks.

How can the appearance of labels containing factual information misinform consumers, you ask? The answer begins with the Food and Drug Administration, the federal government’s food-safety cop, which has declined to mandate GE labels for the simple reason that there’s no nutritionally valid reason to do so.

Measure 92 would require what federal regulators, relying upon science, have denied: a label whose mere presence suggests that the food within differs in some nutritionally significant way from other foods.

Oregonians may or may not like genetically engineered food products and the big companies that provide them, but such antipathy is a lousy reason to approve a measure that will mislead many consumers and place a disproportionate financial burden on those least able to carry it.

Read the full, original article: Voters should oppose mandatory-labeling measure: Editorial endorsement

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