TIL: Anti-labeling bill, the "DARK" act (HR1599) passed in July, mums the word on /r/news, and apparently on wikipedia

39  2015-10-27 by 911bodysnatchers322

I did not know about this act. Maybe I was just /r/outoftheloop. I knew about labeling, and that it was being fought. But this came and went without my even hearing about it. Mostly because I'm in in congress and I am not glued to cspan, but I watch reddit /r/news every day and never saw a thing about it. Which says their astroturfs are really good at what they do.

There is no wikipedia article that I can find on the DARK legislation. I searched via startpage, google and wikipedia's native mediawiki search.

I am so paranoid a person I had to test if i was being quantuminserted

16 comments

2  FlacOrGtfo 2015-10-27

Wouldn't the government spend more money trying to get GMO laws passed than could, supposedly, be saved by GMOs? What's the point of GMOs anyways, to save money or something? They're really adamant about this and it doesn't add up.

-2  King_Of_Regret 2015-10-27

The point of a GMO is that it makes it easier, cheaper, and quicker to grow produce, with superior product in the end. It makes big agriculture lots of money to use GMO, but theres nothing inherently harmful about a GMO. It's just a case of hardcore lobbying by Monsanto, not a nefarious scheme to harm/control us through GMO, as plenty seem to think.

2  lf11 2015-10-27

It's just coincidental that unifying our food stream through a single, for-profit corporation leads to absolute control (food=power) over us as well as causing lots of unintended harm.

-1  King_Of_Regret 2015-10-27

Lots of unintended harm? Care to back that up with a source?

3  lf11 2015-10-27

Why, do you think it's intentional? I don't think it's intentional at all.

Unintentionally, there are lots of general problems relating to monogenetic food sources. Rootworm is becoming resistant to Bt and has coincidentally developed a taste for lots of other things besides corn. Crop failure due to seasonal changes that would have been avoided with the use of more diverse cultivars. Increased use of insecticide (I know Bt is supposed to reduce insecticide use but in practice the reverse is true) causes all sorts of environmental harm in the waterways. The list goes on and on.

Plus you have all these annoying rumors about glyphosate and cancer, Bt and cancer, Bt and autism, increased gluten content and GI inflammatory conditions, and all this crap. Is any of it true? We don't know. Sure will suck if even a fraction of it turns out to be accurate, though. Wups.

1  FlacOrGtfo 2015-10-27

How can we trust Monsanto to make GMOs when their herbicides are carcinogenic? (In fact, this is considered a human rights violation, since access to safe food and human health is being challenged)

Pollack, Andrew. "Weed Killer, Long Cleared, is Doubted." New York Times. Mar 28 2015. Web. 22 Oct. 2015.

Now I don't have a source to directly suggest that GMOs are dangerous, however, it is important to point out that there are a lot of aspects of genetics that science does not yet understand and this could create unintended consequences.

An analogy is like someone with basic HTML coding knowledge going in and modifying a PHP website, and subsequently fucking everything up (I would know, I've made that mistake).

0  King_Of_Regret 2015-10-27

Because the difference between a GMO and an herbicide is immense, and you saying things like that shows how little you know of the process. It's just taking genes out of one organism, and putting them in another. Like can you eat corn? Then you can eat this GMO tomato that has a gene from corn to make it more resistant to disease (or whatever)

1  FlacOrGtfo 2015-10-27

How can we trust Monsanto to make GMOs when their herbicides are carcinogenic?

Besides, there are aspects of genetics that are not yet understood. A former California Institute of Technology president stated, "we are just not smart enough — and won’t be for a very long time — to feel comfortable about the consequences of changing heredity".

Wade, Nicholas. "Scientists Seek Ban on Method of Editing the Human Genome." New York Times. Mar 19 2015. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.

0  911bodysnatchers322 2015-10-27

Without the glysophate the roundup ready corn wouldn't work. I like how you astroturfers try to defend positions by cognitive capture / misrepresentation by omission bias all of your arguments. The safety of Roundup ready corn is wholly irrelevant in that it totally ignores the glysophate component in the equation. Just to clarify for those who still don't get this:

you plant a field of roundup ready corn (it resists glysophate) and you spray this field and it kills all the weeds that don't have resistance to herbicide glysophate or tradename 'roundup', leaving behind only your gmo corns.

The two products necessarily act in tandem as one. I'm not saying roundup ready corn is safe either. I'm just discounting the corn of the argument because were' talking about the roundup itself now.

0  911bodysnatchers322 2015-10-27

Trolling-- You are violating rule 5. Conspiracy theorists exist because of sources. There are so many now that we are not going to find it acceptable to use this "where's your source" trope anymore because you want to feign intellectual laziness as a disguise for gmo astroturfing. There is an overwhelming mountain of evidence now that you are very likely Not a gosh damned fool but rather someone who is actively astroturfing here.

As if we are expected to believe that you didn't read the same stories about how europe has banned gmos because of evidence of harm, that pollinators aren't dying in record numbers because of problems with agro industry ranging from pesticides to roundup to bt corn as a 'perfect storm'. You hold up some kind of contrarian proof gmos are safe but you 'cannot prove a lie' and no miniscule number of monsanto-paid biologists are going to convince me you're right about anything, no matter how much sciency mumbo jumbo data they throw out there.

Our scientists outnumber yours and have better credentials, so there. I just pulled an authoritarian card on you.

You can continue to allege there is no harm in GMOs but we'll fight you till the end of eternity on this one.

0  911bodysnatchers322 2015-10-27

The point of a GMO is that it makes it easier, cheaper, and quicker to grow produce, with superior product in the end.

"The point of a GMO is that it makes it easier, cheaper, and quicker to grow produce, with a ruinous, pollinator-destroying, human health compromising, ecologically devolving and diversity-destroying product, for the purposes of enriching a miniscule number of bioproduct companies operating worldwide, minimally-regulated and without any forethought, accountability or responsibility as to the social, political and environmental consequences of their purely, financially-motivated pursuit, while also actively opposing the attention, concerns and will of the vast majory of end-users worldwide.

IFTFY.

GMOs are so opposed because they act as a singular, exemplar model of everything that is wrong with unregulated capitalism

1  thetimeisnow 2015-10-27

It has not passed the Senate

1  digdog303 2015-10-27

Does it really have a chance of not getting passed in the senate??

1  thetimeisnow 2015-10-27

I dont know , Im reading that polls show 90% support for labeling and it still passed the House. but with that level of opposition maybe there is a chance. We need a subreddit and campaign here on reddit quick-like /r/gmoinfo , other subs in sidebar there, /r/Monsanto etc ,

1  MrMarmot 2015-10-27

You said you didn't hear about it because you were "[in] in congress." Does this mean you are among the Legislative Branch or because you're too busy having sex?

0  compliancekid78 2015-10-27

I just avoid purchasing things that have GMOs when possible.

If a company doesn't label it then they don't get my business.

What more can you really do?

-2  King_Of_Regret 2015-10-27

The point of a GMO is that it makes it easier, cheaper, and quicker to grow produce, with superior product in the end. It makes big agriculture lots of money to use GMO, but theres nothing inherently harmful about a GMO. It's just a case of hardcore lobbying by Monsanto, not a nefarious scheme to harm/control us through GMO, as plenty seem to think.