This is part of the reason why I wish we had more of an "open food" movement. As it stands, it is astonishingly difficult to make well reasoned choices about food. There are numerous gimmicks that can be played going far beyond things like http://www.simplemost.com/sneaky-reason-tic-tacs-can-say-sug... , which is still non-obvious.

This is a reason I added to my more "traditional" reasons for being a vegetarian - as it stands, it is very hard to reason about the likely supply chain of food that I purchase. Nevertheless, it is easier in my view with vegetables as they are lower down in the food chain. With meat, there are a whole bunch of extra parameters governing things beyond the feed composition and structure.

This also meshes well with the original ideas behind the virtues of free markets, which depend upon customers making informed, rational choices. "Openness" regarding the supply chain is essential for the critical "informed" aspect.

No, if we had our food correctly labeled, all food in your supermarket would be labeled as GMO. All of our food has been bioengineered for centuries, we were just using extremely crude methods until now.

The morally indefensible position is the one that vilifies, through ignorance, a set of plant breeding techniques that have the ability to save wildlife habitat and reduce pesticide use and carbon emissions worldwide by making agriculture more efficient.

If you want to adopt a morally defensible position on this issue, may I suggest asking for labeling with estimates of water, herbicide, and acreage use of your food? Or carbon footprint estimates? Because a "correct" GMO label that actually carries any meaning will look like the methods section of a Science article.

Drastically reduce beef consumption, and save resources, save wildlife habitat like the Amazon (I have been there. Most clearing is for beef production). Beef production creates a lot of methane which is even more damaging than CO2, per molecule produced.

It takes between 4000 to 5000 gallons of water per pound of beef produced. Chicken production uses about 5% the resources of beef. Vegan is better still.

I think we are in agreement on protecting the environment, but we have different strategies for doing that. Fair enough.

My takeaway from the article was they're arguing for this as well. The central issue is the third party GMO-free accreditation is being applied to products where there is no GMO-containing equivalent on the market at all (like the kitty litter example. It doesn't even have genes!). This is mostly to create a demand for a premium priced product.

This is like selling a PC with the label "No need to change oil!". I like not having to change oil, but there's no need to do that for _any_ PC.

This is a problem we've managed to solve for dozens of other dietary preferences, from kosher status to gluten-free, without insisting on mandatory labeling. Why is GMO so special?

It's hard to believe the sincerity of your claim, given that you can reasonably infer anything not advertising itself as "non-GMO" contains GMO.

Do you think that I have the right to have my food correctly labeled?

It seems to me that a lot of food is labeled as kosher, low fat, sugar free, contains peanuts, gluten-free, etc. I am not sure where your comment comes from.

> a lot of food is labeled as kosher, low fat, sugar free, contains peanuts, gluten-free, etc

His point is that all of these labels are voluntary. There is no need to enforce a law mandating these labels.

I believe that some food companies are trying to make non-gmo labeling illegal.

Do you think it should be illegal for a food supplier to add a 'non-gmo' label?

Of course not. That's silly. However, the supplier should only add that label if it actually is void of GMOs.