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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

You need to understand how this works. First, it's "if GMOs are safe, why do you want to hide it by refusing to label?". Then, when you start putting it on labels, the narrative changes to "if GMOs are safe, then why are you warning us about them by putting them on labels?".

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Withholding the information sure doesn't seem very "scientific" to me. It seems like the opposite of what science is about.

You have to ask yourself, why are you privileging this particular information over everything else that could be on the label? They can't reasonably print everything that's in the food, especially if any part of it contains pieces of plants or animals - the living stuff has so much chemistry in it that you'd have to attach a book to each product to just list them. So producers already have to be picky.

Also, I'm not against labeling that the product is GMO-based. I want to point out at the dynamics around GMO labeling; their most vocal proponents create "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of situation.

Why do we put vitamin C on the label? Why sugar content? Why not carbon atoms? Why anything? The FDA (supposedly) requires labels for things that are considered important by health professionals and consumers. If enough people want to know about GMOs, then it's important. Not labeling GMOs or any other ingredients or by-products that might be seen as "gross" to the consumer, is only about protecting the food manufacturers.

I think it's a BS argument anyway because the average consumer, given two bags of apples that look identical, is going to buy the one that is cheaper. And if for some reason the public decided to never touch GMOs, then so be it. Food manufacturers can make their products in a way that consumers want to buy them. That's a free market. Not being shady and hiding information.

> I think it's a BS argument anyway because the average consumer, given two bags of apples that look identical, is going to buy the one that is cheaper.

Yeah, I agree.

> And if for some reason the public decided to never touch GMOs, then so be it. Food manufacturers can make their products in a way that consumers want to buy them. That's a free market. Not being shady and hiding information.

So they do, and that's why we have organic food industry, which is even more shady than the original one. The reason we have this argument is that looking at why public decided to never touch GMOs makes one facepalm. It's mostly pseudo-science wrapped in FUD, perpetuated ad nauseam in popular press - creating fear and then playing off it. It's good for making money selling articles or ad views. It's not good for making this planet a better place for everyone.

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