>Seed companies obviously want to avoid, for their customers, the
>enormous practical problems of trying to label everything derived from
>their products as "GMO". Clearly this would be expensive, and might
>turn off some customers.
I wonder if you are both speaking the same language. I think Jim was
saying the government was considering making it illegal to label
something as NOT genetically engineered whereas Dale seems to be
saying the companies don't want to be forced to label things as GE.
This sounds like more of the OFPA (or is it OFMA?) hassle -- that is, the
government trying to rein in free expression. If the organic, non-ge
market is so profitable, then it would be just plain stupid for the
government to disallow special labelling to identify product that avoided
ge sources. (To get my two cents worth in on OFPA, I think it is equally
stupid to appropriate all the organic words rather than just create an
"USOFPA Certified" label). For some reason, I have given up looking for
good sense (maybe even good intentions) from lawmakers.
I say, let people label if they want to (or if their customers demand it) and
just monitor that what they say on their labels is true. Why is it so
difficult for Congress or the USDA bureaucrats to understand this
concept?
BOB
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