A good friend had a Hatteras 58 ft long range cruiser. I loved the boat. It had a big engine room and, as it had been outfitted over the years with new electronics and other necessities, it had different DC voltages for different circuits and a spaghetti of wires in all directions. When components failed, and they often did, I would haul out the wiring diagrams and try trace the fault. The diagrams enabled me to understand the function of the wires. When we left harbor I found my bearings from the buoys and the rule was simple – as you exit the harbor keep the red buoys on the left and the green buoys on the right – the rule was reversed when you entered the harbor “red, right, return”. And in the open seas where we had no discourse with civilization, nature provided our bearings – the magnetic compass, or the arc of the sun. Although gps via satellites was an easier alternative.
This past Saturday as my running/walking group munched at the bagel house, religion surfaced (a welcome change from presidential politics). And I wondered why, in an age of greatly enhanced electronic communication of news and knowledge, the three religions still build such fervor among their followers. A bemused silence followed. And then on Sunday I was discussing prop 37 (proposes labeling of genetically engineered foods) with one of my sons in California and I said it was hard to understand why anyone would vote against it and yet it is looking as though it won’t pass. And he said he still had to read up but if passed it would increase his grocery bill by $400 pa. He suggested I visit the “noprop37.” website Which I have done. It is a persuasive website. It hammers on so many touch points and in doing so it provides bearings for the undecided to navigate their ship.
I prize integrity, which is holding fast to your moral and ethical principles, but to do so we need bearings. Without bearings how would you progress in a dark churning sea? So we take our bearings from those we have elevated to role models (the noprop37 website included farmers, small business owners, scientists, medical practitioners, nobel prize winners etc). But then we find that our role models are flawed or also adrift or (worst) have a dog in the fight. And so perhaps this is why religions attract some – a safe harbor where the rules are clear and you don’t have the responsibility to decide, you just have to abide.
“Higher Grocery Bills
Prop 37 would increase grocery bills for families by $400 per year and increase taxpayer costs by millions. ”
Just the heading of the noprop37 site has to be enough to make you shake your head. Mostly I supposed it just comes down to if you believe it or not. How can you make anyone understand that it just isn’t true? There are so many forces at play when it comes to family grocery bills and taxes, and so many politics, there’s just no way a connection like that could be made.
It’s one of the reasons I just avoid supermarkets whenever I can, because every package label, every health claim, every marketing or price claim are probably all lies. It’s getting to be everything we’re told about food is a lie.
Up until a few years ago it was illegal for many of the government funded news sites in Europe to ’embed’ advertising in news stories, in other words masquerade an advertisement as a news story. It’s really been an eye opener what’s been appearing as news stories recently, and lots of people are complaining! For example ‘news’ stories about a study proving eating something is good for you or bad for you. Believing these is enough to give you eating disorders for the rest of your life!
What’s really saving the situation are comments, which many news sites still allow. Many people now use comments to tell the news sites what garbage they are publishing.
It’s really scary what people can get away with by publishing so-called ‘facts’.
Comments help – yes, but some comments such as those on Amazon both extolling and decrying a product must be sharply discounted. For me the issue is loss of independence (you could also call it integrity) which has occurred with the growth of ultra large/rich entities. Independent newspapers now consolidated into groups. Large manufacturers, distributors and retailers with the clout to align the beacons on which we depend. A curious juxtaposition – the presence of powerful influencers offset by this wonderful medium of communication – the internet.
Just the heading of the noprop37
Yeh, but it’s the footer that says it all: “Major funding by Monsanto Company, E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) and more than 40 food company members.” Also, among others, BASF Plant Science, Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences LLC, Syngenta Corporation. $44 million raised by the noprop37 group buys a lot of media, all of it with the same message: it doesn’t make sense. It’s a campaign aimed to confuse. With all this media money spent on a month long TV ad blitz, the No side isn’t commandingly in the lead although they have erased an earlier 2:1 deficit. Latest polls show the No side at 50.1% with 10.5% undecided. Another poll shows the No side with 42% and the Yes side with 44%. The Yes side has only started with its TV ads late last week.
The proposition contains some terrible wording: “In the case of any processed food, in clear and conspicuous language on the front or back of the package of such food, with the words “Partially Produced with Genetic Engineering” or “May be Partially Produced with Genetic Engineering.” I’m betting that all packaged foods will say “May be Partially Produced with Genetic Engineering” even if they don’t. What were they thinking when they included a weasel clause.
The proposition is flawed and has compromises. The noprop37 website ridicules that meat for pets must be labeled but not meat for humans. So veggieburgers will have the label but not meatburgers. You have to wonder what influences were applied behind scenes.
Supposedly we have labeling here in Europe, but there are an amazing number of loopholes. It’s a bit like trying to regulate computers, the technologies keep changing, and it’s hard to keep it under control.
Meat is a big loophole here. Sugar is another, because the food companies claim the processed product no longer contains GMOs. We also have this standard of 0.9% of GMOs being considered as no GMOs, something that seemed reasonable at the time but an unacceptably high threshold now. In fact this 0.9% just lets the food companies contaminate even organic foods with 2-3%, and later apologize and claim they didn’t know they were exceeding the legal limit.
We also have this exemption for food packaging — GMO plastics. This is really annoying, and supermarkets are full of it. Good thing it often makes a loud noise when you touch it!
The meat for pets/humans makes a little sense to me. After all one is usually canned, processed and labeled in the factory. The other is sometimes cut to order by small businesses, and packaged on the spot. I think if you eat meat, and don’t know where it came from, you’ve got to expect it to have been raised with GMOs.
I think if prop 37 wins, just having some labeling will help a lot and raise awareness. Most stores around here try to avoid having any associations with GMOs, and very few places will carry labeled foods. I think it will put a lot of pressure on places like Whole Foods to only carry GMO-free foods.
I agree – something is better than nothing. Tax legislation is another example of motivated creative individuals discovering loopholes and contrivances.
If there’s labeling regulation with lots of loopholes, there will always be people like us around to identify and make fun of them. Just like some people have a preoccupation with tax loopholes, some of us have a preoccupation with food…
It seems there will always be loopholes and the more words trying to close them, the more they grow. Something like U.S. accounting rules on complex subjects, pages and pages of rules which are difficult to digest and spawn unplanned offspring. Nutritious untainted food, is it too much to ask for?
Nutritious untainted food, is it too much to ask for
If organic farming is the natural way, shouldn’t organic produce just be called ‘produce’ and make the pesticide-laden stuff take the burden of an adjective?
Ideally. But we have a conceit that we can and should improve upon nature. From the relatively innocuous white flour from whole wheat, and hybrid seed from heirloom/open pollinated seed to the more insidious Green Revolution and then its successor, genetic engineering. I fear that a few more Sandy’s and Midwest droughts (after we have depleted the Ogallala aquifer) will puncture our complacency.