From: Alfio Puglisi (puglisi@arcetri.astro.it)
Date: Fri Jul 05 2002 - 06:40:31 MDT
On Thu, 4 Jul 2002, Technotranscendence wrote:
>The real problem here is requiring food labels is coercive. Eliminate
>that. If consumers insist on knowing what's in the food, then, chances
>are, they will provided with such information. However, having the
>government call the tune is not freedom in action. Nor, given what we
>know about politics and history, is it rational.
This governement act is in direct response to a huge consumer backslash
against GM-food. Here the whole affair is seen like a us vs. them match,
where consumers do not want to eat a single gram of GM products, and the
food industry tries to sneak them without notice. In the real world, there
are a lot of gray areas, but emotions run high on these matters.
As an European, I support GM labels (and you can bet that I'll buy a
lot of GM food, if it's cheaper and same/better quality). Funny how many
pro-free market guys on this list, do not like the labels. As far as I
know, free markets require informed consumers. Now, it's true that many
consumers are not very well informed about this, but removing the labels
would make consumers even less "informed".
Alfio
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