From: Alfio Puglisi (puglisi@arcetri.astro.it)
Date: Sat Jul 06 2002 - 04:52:37 MDT
On Fri, 5 Jul 2002, 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). 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.
I agree, but I don't see why it should be so difficult to be informed. A
company selling a new variety of GM apples, calling them simply "apples"
and dumping them in the market together with the classic ones, is
effectively lying about its product. A little label is not a great effort
on their part.
Or maybe you think that Ford should market a V8 Explorer and a
mono-cylinder one, without telling the customer the difference. And that
said customer should buy the appropriate Consumer Report issue and check
the serial number of the engine, and trust that the information leaked to
CR is accurate, and so on.
>If GM content is so important to consumers, then they will not buy
>products which do not promote themselves as GM free
This is already happening. A lot of food is labelling itself as
"biologic", which stands for GM-free plus a bunch of other things. Lots of
people increasingly buy this kind of food
>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.
As I said before, it's a matter of balancing things. If discovering the
GM status of my food requires an effort comparable to the OJ Simpson
investigations, I feel that the rules should be shifted to benefit the
consumer a little bit more.
Cheers,
Alfio
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