The whole "labeling is too expensive" argument is a smokescreen. Years
ago, food processors argued that adding nutritional labeling to
processed foods was impossible because of expense. They even testified
before Congress that it was impossible. Then Mr. Lefavre, head of the
cooperative alliance, testified that the Co-op label had been ding it
for a couple of years already and brought a can of Co-op label food to
show the Congressional committee.
This argument that it's cost prohibitive and will have the greatest
impact on the small companies is ludicrous. When did the giant food
corporations start to worry about the smaller companies? Seems to me
they've been trying to gobble them up or put them out of business.
And separating GMOs from non-GMOs? Let me use our waste water systems as
an analogy. Our cities have one pipeline for residential and industrial
waste water that leads to a waste water treatment facility. the problem
with reclaiming our waste for fertilizer lies in the fact that industry
dumps heavy metals into this waste stream To go back and separate these
2 systems is cost prohibitive- right now. if we had planned and put in 2
systems to start, the problem wouldn't exist.
We are at the beginning of our introduction of GMOs into the food
"pipeline." It would be much easier now to set up a system for
separation now than years down the road. Let the companies who say that
GMOs will rescue the world from hunger, obviate the use of chemicals and
make all farmers rich lay out the money for the infrastructure.
And I love the analogy of the pink pickups. It also reminds me of when
the American consumers wanted smaller, gas efficient cars. US auto
companies responded by continuing to make big, gas-guzzling tanks and
spending their money through advertising, trying to convince us we
wanted them, instead of for redesign and retooling. this resulted in
Foreign auto companies taking over the majority of the US auto market.
You'd think that the food and ag suppliers would be smart enough to
learn from others' mistakes. Or are they just huge dinosaurs that keep
plodding along and try to justify their path towards a precipice rather
than taking the necessary action to veer off.
Oh well, it's not all bad. The more they try to shove what we don't want
down our throats (literally), the more they open up markets for small,
locally marketing farmers. I guess we owe them a big thank you. But
thanking them may confuse them even more.
Alex
--------------EF09B125194EB1B140FEF94D
Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii;
name="waldenfarm.vcf"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Description: Card for Alex McGregor
Content-Disposition: attachment;
filename="waldenfarm.vcf"
begin:vcard
n:;
x-mozilla-html:FALSE
adr:;;;;;;
version:2.1
x-mozilla-cpt:;6976
end:vcard
--------------EF09B125194EB1B140FEF94D--
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
http://www.sare.org/htdocs/hypermail