From: Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
Date: Thu Jun 28 2001 - 10:06:16 MDT
bradbury@aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) writes:
>I thought I'd excerpt a portion of it to show *precisely*
>why I'm against labeling food products as genetically
>modified...
>
>> America's left brain is frightened by Frankenfoods. While writing this
>> column I got a call from a massage therapist in Marin who was pretty
>> certain that soybean oil would contain traces of genetically engineered
>> proteins. The therapist, who works with babies, thought the soybean oil
>> might prompt an allergic reaction. She said she would continue using
>> organic olive oil.
>
>The question becomes whether or not this person could effectively
>evaluate the "labels" even if they were present. I'll go through
>the analysis you would need to do, so you can judge the knowledge
>required --
[ long list of scientific arguments against her justification for organic
food. ]
>So, while I'm certainly in support of "freedom of speech"
>I do not think you should put a "little" information into
>the hands of people unqualified to effectively judge it.
The reasons why we should assume this kind of paternalistic reasoning
are dangerous include:
- there is widespread evidence that people are much more successful than
anyone else at determining what is in their self interest, and that other
people who claim to know better are usually maximising some other set of
interests. One means of evaluating products is using the reputations of
the vendors; the therapist has probably used something like this approach
to determine that sticking to organic foods isn't very risky.
- the same reasoning could at least as easily be used to rationalize
opposition to labels that are of genuine value (I gather that mayonnaise
with EDTA is safer than mayonnaise without EDTA, and that most consumers
have no clue about this; does that mean I shouldn't be able to discriminate
in favor of EDTA?).
I can easily come up with hypotheses that would explain her opinions
in ways that are consistent with her being qualified to judge the
significance of GMO labels.
For instance, the therapist's main motivation might be a concern over
the harm associated with more centralized control over food that could
result from people becoming dependent on patented improvements, but not
think that making that argument directly would be effective due to
tragedy of the commons type problems.
Or maybe she will be unable to adapt to rapid technological change, so
she is motivated to oppose technology in general. She might know that her
interests conflict with those of the majority, or she might not know whether
her real reasons are selfish or altruistic, so she feels a need to invent
a more altruistic looking reason.
If you can't point to benefits of biotech that are sufficient to persuade
they average person to buy biotech products, then I'm fairly confident that
the benefits aren't sufficient for it to matter to the average person.
My guess is that in something like five years, biotech will produce
something sufficiently valuable to overcome most of the resistence.
In the meantime, please keep spreading the word about how phony the luddite
reaction is, but don't try to use that to surpress accurate information.
>of deaths attributable to food allergies in the U.S. on an
>annual basis is 125, a number only slightly greater than the
>85 people killed by lightning [11]. So unless the AgBio people
>are engineering something that is much more toxic than our
>existing food supply people should focus their attention on
>things like firearms, drinking, swimming, fires and other
>hazards that kill thousands annually and forget about the
>labeling debate.
And a similar calculation would probably show that, if your motives
were simply to prevent near-term health problems, you should forget about
the labeling debate too. The fact that you haven't suggests to me that you
are obscuring your goals.
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Peter McCluskey | Fed up with democracy's problems? Examine Futarchy: http://www.rahul.net/pcm | http://hanson.gmu.edu/futarchy.pdf or .ps
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