The GMO Debate: 5 Things to Stop Arguing

by Tamar Haspel (The Washington Post) ... I’m guessing you’d agree that the public debate about GMOs isn’t playing out in a constructive way. Both sides have dug trenches, and they’re lobbing grenades over the wall while nothing much changes. It’s the World War I of food issues, and something’s gotta give.
I’m going to suggest five somethings. Each is an argument, from one side or the other, that I think should be retired. If we all agreed to stop lobbing these particular grenades, we could move on to more substantive issues and perhaps generate a little goodwill in the bargain.
1. GMOs are dangerous to eat.
It’s impossible to be certain that a GM food, or anything else, is safe. But all uncertainty is not created equal, and the chance that the genetically modified crops in our food supply pose a danger to human health is extraordinarily small. There have been thousands of studies on these foods, many of them long-term and independently funded, and virtually every mainstream science organization has come down on the side of safety.

One of the most compelling studies came out just last month, and it had billions of subjects that eat GMOs almost exclusively: livestock. Researchers from the University of California at Davis looked at health data on more than 100 billion animals and found no ill effects — in fact, no effects at all — attributable to a switch from non-GMO feed to GMO.

There is a consensus on the safety of GM crops.
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2. Labeling is unnecessary because GMOs are safe.
This argument misses the point. If GMOs were dangerous, the FDA wouldn’t label them, it would ban them. ...
Is wanting to know about GMOs reasonable?
Sometimes it’s not (see Argument 1), but let’s take a GMO skeptic who says herbicide-tolerant crops concern her because they might foster herbicide-intensive agriculture, with negative environmental consequences, and that we need to start building more transparency into our agricultural system so consumers can vote with their wallets for the kind of system they want to see. You might disagree with her, but I don’t think she’s unreasonable.
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3. Only Big Ag benefits from GMOs.
It’s unfortunate that Americans’ first exposure to genetically engineered crops was to herbicide-tolerant corn and soy. Because the benefits of those most widely planted GMOs do accrue chiefly (not exclusively, but I won’t quibble) to commodity farmers and agribusiness, all other genetically modified foods have been tarred with the same brush. The ringspot-resistant papaya is rarely part of the discussion and, no matter how often I flog my favorite, the yeast that produces healthful long-chain omega-3 fats, it just doesn’t make a dent in the association that GMOs have with Big Ag.
The list of GMOs with benefits to the rest of us is long. ...
4. We’ve been genetically modifying crops for thousands of years.
What GMO supporters mean, of course, is that we’ve been cross-breeding for thousands of years. Which is true but irrelevant, because the people who are concerned about GMOs are concerned precisely because the technology is very different from cross-breeding. In making this argument, supporters completely ignore the basis of opponents’ skepticism, and that’s condescending and counterproductive.
It also undermines what may be one of the most interesting and compelling arguments in favor of GMO...
5. GMO supporters are Monsanto shills, and opponents are anti-science.
The shill part is pretty obvious. Please just stop.
The anti-science part is more complicated. The people who study how we make decisions about issues of science and policy tell us that our positions on those issues tend to determine our perception of the science, not the other way around. Most GMO opponents aren’t anti-science; they’re anti-GMO... READ MORE and MORE / MORE / MORE / MORE (BioTechNow) and MORE (AgFax.com) and MORE (Food Navigator)