Washington Post: GMO's are not "poison."

[Archae]

It's long past time the GMO hysterics finally admit that they are simply dead wrong.

Corporate irresponsibility over GMOs

Pass any Chipotle these days — and it is my gastronomic preference to pass rather than enter — and you will see signs claiming credit for removing ingredients that contain GMOs (genetically modified organisms) from the menu. It is the first big chain to do so, and probably not the last. The business press has pronounced it “a savvy move to impress millennials” and a “bet on the younger generations in America.”

This milestone in the history of fast-food scruples (and of advertising) is also a noteworthy cultural development: the systematic incorporation of anti-scientific attitudes into corporate branding strategies. There is no credible evidence that ingesting a plant that has been swiftly genetically modified in a lab has a different health outcome than ingesting a plant that has been slowly genetically modified through selective breeding. The National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the World Health Organization have concluded that GMOs are safe to eat. This scientific consensus is at least as strong as the one on human-caused climate change.

Michael Gerson is a nationally syndicated columnist who appears twice weekly in The Post. View Archive

Whole Foods promises “full GMO transparency” by 2018. Its Web site emphasizes “your right to know.” But you will search the site in vain for any explanation of how or why GMOs are harmful, because an actual assertion would not withstand scrutiny. Evidently your right to know does not include serious scientific arguments. Chipotle co-chief executive Steve Ells set out his rationale this way: “They say these ingredients are safe, but I think we all know we’d rather have food that doesn’t contain them.”

“They” say. “We” know. It brought to mind an argument made by Dan Kahan of Yale in the journal Nature concerning global warming. If you are, say, a Republican in the Deep South, your capacity to confront global climate disruption directly is vanishingly small (assuming that you think it is a problem). And the cost of bucking your neighbors on the issue may be considerable. They are likely to view you as an oddity or a turncoat, and to question your judgment on other matters. So the decision to conform to the views of your cultural group or team, while not heroic, is not irrational. (The same argument could be made about the team composed of enlightened corporate chief executives.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/corporate-irresponsibility-over-gmos/2015/05/14/902c95e6-fa5e-11e4-a13c-193b1241d51a_story.html

[villager]

1. Written by rightwing Michael Gerson, aide to Bush I and Jack Kemp, author of "Heroic Conservatism"

Has never seen corporate spin he didn't swallow wholeheartedly.

Well, unless the corporation is less-than-Monsanto-size. Like, maybe, Chipotle.

[pnwmom]

2. Correct. But many were specifically developed to be used with poisons, like Roundup.

A GMO that has been doused with Roundup absorbs the pesticide -- it can't be washed off -- but isn't killed by it. So people consume the pesticide when they eat the GMO food product. That's the risk more than the GMO itself.

[Oneironaut]

3. Not poison, but they also need to be heavily regulated.

Blanket statements like "GMOs are poison" or "GMOs are completely safe" brush the issue off like it isn't complex. The entire argument has two uninformed sides battling it out, with no sensible group in the middle.

The government needs to get involved and not take companies' words for it that GMOs are safe. Researching the safety of your own product is a conflict of interest, and produces results that are laughable (even if they are accurate). GMOs can be good and bad, but need to be approached cautiously - being able to modify food is a powerful tool, but powerful tools can also be disastrous if misused.

[MFrohike]

4. A pair of pennies

WaPo also tells us that Social Security is somehow going broke, despite the fact that the US Government can't run out of money.

I don't much care about this particular issue, but I really hate seeing people cite that right-wing rag like it's got some kind of authority.

[Silent3]

5. The way some people talk, you'd think GMO = glyphosate

And even where glyphosate comes into this, it's a bigger risk to butterflies than humans who consume it.

The environmental concern about drenching crops in Roundup is the most legitimate GMO-related concern of which I'm aware. That does not, however, make every single GMO the equivalent of megadoses of glyphosate, or make it a high-minded moral stance to treat all GMOs as if they are POISON!1!!!!!!11!