This article expands on a presentation/discussion I had with a Food Politics class at the University of Minnesota this past month. Being a Political Science class it delves into politics and may not be suitable for all readers. Parental discretion is advised.
One of the problems with farming in Minnesota is you get the winters off. Why is that such a bad thing? Well, it gives you time to read and think about stuff. And unfortunately nowadays on the internets there is a lot of stuff one can read, some of which is even true! And with all this stuff to read there is a lot of stuff to think about and with winter there is plenty of time to do the thinking. So when you wonder what I do all winter the answer is “reading and thinking”.
Being in the farming business I tend to read articles about farming. Being an organic farmer I tend to read articles either about how great organic farming is or about how horrible chemical farming is. There are a lot of opinions out there and I suppose some of the opinions are based on scientific research. I have no time for reading scientific research, so I just depend on my own scientific thinking. I don’t let facts influence my opinions. So far it’s done well for me.
The most recent thought I’ve been mulling over is in the realm of the whole GMO labeling situation. I don’t want to go into all the details about GMO labeling but suffice it to say that there are people who want packages to label whether they contain genetically modified ingredients and corporations who don’t want these labels. So far a number of ballot measures in a variety of states have been defeated (and I think a couple may have succeeded but without much ramification to labeling). The argument for labeling is that GMOs are toxic and are killing us all just to profit large ag businesses – or something like that. The argument against labeling is people are really stupid and can’t be trusted to make their own decisions – or something like that. Both are really good arguments!
But when you have such persuasive arguments on both sides how can one possibly decide what is right? This is where I use one of the few non-scientific classes I took in college – history. Isn’t there something about those who cannot learn from history are bound to repeat it? Maybe we can find something from the past that is similar and see what history can tell us?
Let me suggest trans-fat. We all know what trans-fat is, no? Trans-fat is an artificial (man-made) fat created by adding a couple molecules of hydrogen to existing unsaturated fats. The purpose is to create a more solid fat with greater shelf life.
It was not more than 30 years ago we were told by the FDA to restrict our consumption of natural fats for the more heart healthy partially hydrogenated oils – otherwise known as trans-fats. We were told it is healthier for your heart to eat margarine. In the last 10 years this message has flipped 180 degrees. The FDA a few years ago required companies to label their products with the amount of trans-fat and changed the recommended daily allowance of trans-fat to zero; we are told we should not consume any trans-fats at all due to its link to heart disease. And just this fall they are requiring all food manufactures and restaurants to remove trans-fats from their products. Obviously now the FDA doesn’t think trans-fats are healthy at all! Either do most heart related health groups.
Trans-fats have been around since the early part of the 20th century and grew in wide acceptance around the 1950s and 1960s. It wasn’t until the 1990s that science started catching up with how bad these are for our collective health. For the past 100 years or so how many people have died prematurely from their consumption of trans-fat? How can we trust a government organization that at one time promoted products that cause early death? Now we could say that the government didn’t know how poisonous these products were; they were relying on the research companies that made the products provided to the government. Realistically how could the FDA have known how bad these products are?
That is the exact situation we are facing today with GMOs though instead of adding a few atoms of hydrogen we humans are inserting whole new genes into the plant. And as we all know, genes contain a lot more than just a few atoms of hydrogen. Like trans-fats, the FDA doesn’t know the effects of consuming GMOs. Nobody knows the effects. Finding causal relationships like this are difficult at best. Generally these relationships go unnoticed for decades. It took close to 100 years for trans-fat. Creating experiments that prove something is unhealthy and could cause premature death are highly unlikely to happen. And when corporations put contractual limits on the testing of their products it makes it even more difficult to determine their safety.
So we’ve already shown we can’t trust the government – even if we don’t take a Tea Party approach to what we think of government. They obviously have failed us in the past. Anyone else heard of dioxin, asbestos, DDT? These are all products that were approved for release in the environment only to be shown later that they caused great harm. So unfortunately we can’t trust government and we can’t trust manufacturers.
So, who can we trust? Probably nobody who has any skin in the GMO game. But that’s ok. We can believe what we want to believe. If we are prone to believe wild rumors and speculation of the end of the earth that is fine. If we take a more scientific approach to our decisions, then more power to us. But what this all says to me is that we the consumer should have a right to know what is in the food we eat so that we can make a decision – no matter how we come to the decision. By withholding this information we become uninformed consumers at the mercy of big corporations and government agencies that do not have our best interests at heart. Let us decide if we want to consume GMOs. Let us decide if we feel they are safe. Let us decide if the FDA is wrong on GMOs much like they were wrong on trans-fats. That is all labeling proponents are asking.