What's New in Life Science Research

Let's assume imagine that there are good ways to handle all the worries about GM-crops in the world that I raised in my last post -- that there won't be collateral damage among the non-targeted species, that the targeted species won't become resistant, that the GM crops will be sufficiently isolated from non-GMO crops that their genes won't end up in the larger agricultural gene pool counted upon by seed savers and other non-corporate-licensee farmers.

Let's further assume that the GM crops are nutritionally sound with no unforeseen consequences (e.g., allergic reactions) to those consuming them.

Will the consumers want these crops? Or maybe I should ask, will they want them if they know they're GMOs?

As far as I can tell, in Europe, GMOs need to be labeled as such. In the U.S., the presumption has been against labeling, on the assumption that the genetically modified versions of food crops and animals are interchangeable with the standard models, at least when it comes time to eat them.

So lots of the folks in the U.S. may be happily munching on their GMOs, while fewer folks in the European Union are doing so -- yet the American consumer may have no earthly idea just which of the things he or she is consuming contain GMOs.

But in the case that the GM crops are nutritionally sound with no unforeseen consequences to those consuming them, does this awareness matter?

I think it does. Here, I quote an earlier version of myself:

Out here on the left coast, a number of producers and stores have known for a while that there are consumers who will opt for dairy products made from milk that was not coaxed out of the cow with artificial growth hormones, and indeed will pay a little more for them (but not the premium you'd pay for full-on organic milk or cheese). But some of the New England dairy farmers are pissed. Basically, they say, the FDA has approved use of these artificial growth hormones, and using them doesn't make any detectable difference to the quality of the milk. Plus, using them gets you the additional gallons of output a struggling farmer needs just to break even. So, those stupid consumers are going to hurt small family farmers.

And here, I need to ask, aren't consumer preferences somehow an important component of these "free markets" I keep hearing so much about? If the consumers prefer milk produced without X -- for whatever reason -- does that not create a market incentive to produce milk without X? (And, by the way, doesn't the cost of doing business change when you don't have to keep buying X to produce that milk?) If producing milk without X is more expensive per gallon than producing milk with X, but the consumers still prefer the milk without X, is this not a place where passing the increased cost on to the consumer is appropriate?

I buy my dairy products in a store where all the dairy products are produced without rBST, and I fully believe the prominent labeling on all these products that there is absolutely no demonstrable difference for human health between these and dairy products produced with rBST. But, as I've noted before, my purchasing decisions are not one dimensional. I avoid the rBST dairy because I don't want to support a crazy system where dairy farmers feel they have to use it to produce enough milk to pay the bills ... but there's so much milk produced that a significant amount of it expires on the shelves or otherwise goes to waste. Producing less and selling it for what it's worth might be more humane for the small producer.

And this is where I get a little irate about people who want to limit the information available to the consumer "for the consumer's own good". Those silly consumers don't realize that milk is milk! Those silly consumers have been tricked into thinking GMOs are "Frankenfoods"!

Those consumers, my friends, make their own choices for all sorts of good reasons. If you aren't OK with that, maybe selling things to them is not a good career choice.

Obviously there's a limit to how much information you can cram on the sticker on the apple. But taking active steps to hide information from consumers, or to limit consumer choice because it's inconvenient for the people who have something to sell (and that includes the people selling the rBST) strikes me as anti-competitive paternalistic crap, and I'd prefer that you keep it off my spinach.

Our food choices are not simply a matter of satisfying our biological needs. Indeed, our consumption more broadly reflects a whole mess of values that are not simply economic.

Even when we value cheap, beautiful, nourishing food, it is not necessarily the only thing we value. We may value biodiversity (of crops and bugs and critters that eat the bugs). We may value local growers over factory farmers, a more diverse economic environment over agricultural consolidation that puts our food production in the hands of a small number of multinational corporations. We may value information that lets us make our own decisions about what we'll buy -- even if working through that information requires effort on our part -- over government paternalism and corporate exhortations to "trust us".

GMOs may well be the best thing things sliced bread. If so, their purveyors ought to make the case to us, trusting that once they've laid it out, we'll exercise our autonomy to avail ourselves of these wonders. But to the extent that big agribusiness wants to keep the presence of GMOs off of our labels, I'm inclined to think that maybe they haven't found the way to make the case to us.

Maybe that ought to be part of the R&D.