I DON'T WANT YOUR FOOD RELIGION...

     I am fortunate to have friends from all sides of the political divide even if the majority of them fall into the liberal side of the equation. One of the things I see popping up in my Facebook feed is a call for the labeling of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). It's taken me a while, but I have come down decidedly against such labeling, at least so long as it is mandatory.

     First of all, I don't find the proponents of such labeling to be putting forth scientific arguments. They fail to establish how transgenic plants (and presumably one day, animals, but let's stick to plants for this post) are inherently different from plants produced by selective breeding, grafting, cloning, and chemical and radiation-induced mutagenesis (i.e. the deliberate damaging of DNA).
     Calling it unnatural is a non-starter since both grafting exists and bacteria having been trading genes with each other across species for billions of years. Perhaps analogously, it is the bacterial version of sexual reproduction.
      I would need a reason (or reasons) that make the insertion of a gene into a plant's DNA fundamentally different from any of the other mentioned methods. Presently the only difference I can say exists definitively is that the changes wrought by such gene insertions are far more precise than any other form of selective breeding as this chart shows.

(click to enlarge)

      Nextly I've learned that such a label would be redundant. There's already a label for it: organic. In order for a foodstuff to receive the coveted organic label, among its requirements is that the foodstuff cannot have been made using GMO plants.
      Therefore, if you do not want GMO products in your diet, you have the organic label to provide you with that reassurance.
      When I originally made this point I was told that organic products are expensive to which I replied they are expensive because they are not popular. If getting GMOs out of people's diets is the goal of label proponents, they need only begin advertising this fact. If getting GMOs out of diets is truly the will of the people, they would then flock to organic products, having a new reason to do so. More people desiring organic products would put pressure on producers which in turn would increase the amount of such products on the market and drive their price down.  I got no response to that.

      It was with this mentioning of the already-existing organic label that got me believing that GMO labeling proponents are not about creating an informed citizenry. I could argue that it is about fear-mongering (especially the calls/stall tactic for ascertaining its safety when I don't see them eager to have scientifically verified/disproven the legitimacy of their claims about organic foods) and while that may be a component of the push for GMO labeling, I thought of it as something else instead: religion.

      As far as I know, there's no science behind organic food nor its movement. Organic appears to me as a philosophy, perhaps a misguided philosophy but a philosophy nonetheless akin to other values-based, but often pseudoscientific, movements like raw food advocacy and alternative medicine. It's presented in an emotionally persuasive, but not evidentially persuasive, way by practitioners to prospective converts. Logical fallacies like "appeal to nature" are also employed but I'm digressing...

      What I'm getting at is I see anti-GMO movement as an offshoot of the organic movement, though still most definitely under the natural food movement's umbrella. For me, their dietary requirements are akin to religious dietary requirements.
      Take kosher (or halal) for example. There's nothing dangerous or particularly unhealthy about non-kosher foods nor is there necessarily anything better or healthier about kosher ones. People consume non-kosher foods all the time without consequence to their health. Scientifically there's nothing to support keeping kosher either. There's some ret-conning of things like pork saying that trichinosis was common back in ye olde days so avoiding pork was a good idea but that's not why this was done.
      No, the reason why religious dietary restrictions exist is the same reason why cultural idioms exist: it serves as a useful way to solidify membership/express solidarity in an exclusive club (so to speak) and to identify outsiders. There are plenty of war stories about how spies were caught not because of some elaborate operation, but because they looked the wrong way first before crossing the street.

     Organic worshipers (if you will) have a set of values by which they abide and through these values, offer a means to show solidarity with fellow practitioners and like any religion, there's an ever-present need for additional adherents to avoid extinction.

      Anyways, plenty of products exist out there which are naturally kosher but others may fall into a gray area and though I'm not Jewish, my store has a rather large Passover selection when the holiday rolls around. Simple observation shows that Passover has its own requirements, or at least stricter ones, as certain products are labeled as being kosher, but not kosher for Passover and others as kosher always.
      If you want kosher products, you have an easy means for identifying them in the marketplace whether the K in a circle symbol or "parve". You can choose to buy kosher whether you are Jewish or not. There are also no requirements (to my knowledge) that all foods that are kosher be labeled as such. It is a voluntary label for the voluntary adherents of Judaism. It might be good business, but it is not a required business.

      I see the organic label as no different than the kosher label and I view the movement to have GMOs labeled without proper scientific reasoning to back up such a labeling requirement as no different than Jewish leaders petitioning Congress to mandate the labeling of all non-kosher foods in the US marketplace. There's no need to label foods as non-kosher when a kosher label already exists and it would violate the First Amendment of the US Constitution I would assume for the government to mandate such labeling as it would appear to be the sponsoring of a religion.
     There's no science behind kosher, only religious values. There's also no science behind organic labeling, only values. Labeling GMO foods does not educate or inform the consumer, it would only promote ignorance in a manner similar to when people use the lay definition of theory when deriding a scientific theory they disagree with. It is not a safety issue since GMO foods are not substantially different from non-GMO foods nutritionally (and if they are, that would require a label or the modification of an existing one like golden rice for example, the Vitamin A section of the nutrition label would have a different number than ordinary rice). We already happily import non-native plants and animals so it can hardly be considered an environmental issue either.
      The FDA already has a black mark against it because its authorizing act specifically exempted pseudoscience-based homeopathic remedies from scrutiny and Congress has never fixed this. The USDA doesn't need a similar black mark with GMO labeling.

      I guess the point is - assuming I've even been making one - is that if you're promoting your values, advertise the organic label better to both increase your adherents and bring down the cost of organic foodstuffs. But until and unless you have a scientific argument to support GMO labeling, I want you to keep your religion out of my food...