Re: NEWS: Europe tightens GM labelling rules

From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Fri Jul 05 2002 - 23:21:38 MDT


On Friday, July 5, 2002, at 08:45 pm, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> Free markets require that the consumer make the effort to keep
> themselves informed. They do not require that producers of said produces
> be the informers. If a producer uses a process, method, or ingredient
> which the consumer does not like or want, it is the consumer's 'caveat
> emptor' responsibility to divine that fact, either by the honest
> voluntary disclosures of the producer, or via trusted third parties who
> do product testing (i.e. Consumer Reports, etc).

Really? So you are against nutrient labeling on food also? And against
ingredient lists? You just want "meat loaf" on the label with no clue
as to what kind of meat, how much meat versus how much filler, or even
if it contains any meat at all? What if you had a whole store shelf
full of 50 brands of "meat loaf" with no details? How do you tell what
to buy? I don't see how less information on the label helps anybody
except people who want to push unwanted products.

> Caveat Emptor, as you
> are likely aware, means 'buyer beware', thus implying that it is the
> consumers responsibility to do due diligence to become and remain
> informed.

How do you become informed if the company doesn't want you to know? If
they don't put it on their label, why would they put it on their
website? If their meat loaf was really soy dog food with gravy, they
would never mention it in any company literature. How would a person
find out? Do a lab test on every product after they opened it?

> If GM content is so important to consumers, then they will not buy
> products which do not promote themselves as GM free, and are verified as
> such by a third party testing agency. Any consumer who claims to not
> want GM but doesn't take the responsibility to do their own due
> diligence is an idiot who deserves to munch on GM.

Oh, yeah. When Food Lion put chlorine bleach into their white fish to
make it look better, it was the consumer's fault. They didn't test the
fish for chlorine bleach before eating it. Food Lion had no incentive
to mention that their fish wasn't like other fish or might contain new
stuff that consumers didn't want. According to you, everyone who ate
bleached fish from Food Lion deserved what they got and were idiots.

Seriously, Mike, have you ever had a lab test done on any of your food
to see if it contained what you thought it did? Haven't you just read
the label and assumed that it meant the same thing it always meant?
This seems like an unreasonable requirement.

--
Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com>
Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>


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