GMO Controversy

The obfuscaters have won again.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/07/21/people-want-gmo-food-labeled-which-is-pretty-much-all-they-know-about-gmos/?wpisrc=nl_green&wpmm=1

There is an entire continent (Africa) where the scare tactics should stop in order to address their massive food shortages.  In fact, someone from the same newspaper seemed to agree 1 year ago:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/the-last-thing-africa-needs-to-be-debating-is-gmos/2015/05/22/81b76574-fe62-11e4-833c-a2de05b6b2a4_story.html

The whole labeling controversy seems to be a proxy for people about the merits of GMOs as a whole. Resistance to labeling prompts the public to assume “they must be hiding something”, no matter what the science might say.  Unfortunately, we can’t trust the intelligence of the populace as a whole and many of the (evil?) companies behind GMOs correctly assume that a label will cause sales to plummet.

Initiatives that serve a corporate interest are not universally bad for the public’s interest, but we live in a black-and-white, zero-sum game world where everyone assumes profits for Big Agra means losses for us.  There are probably plenty of salient examples to point to that support this position, but I don’t think GMOs are one of them.

Here’s a good long form article from Slate on how the papaya industry in Hawaii was saved by GMOs:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/07/are_gmos_safe_yes_the_case_against_them_is_full_of_fraud_lies_and_errors.html