4 ms·

The problem is, when you make all sorts of labeling mandatory, any meaning is lost. Gelatin residuals have no health impacts. DNA or GM residuals have no health

The problem is, when you make all sorts of labeling mandatory, any meaning is lost. Gelatin residuals have no health impacts. DNA or GM residuals have no health impact. You fill the packaging with unnecessary labels, and then the actually relevant things - like how much sugar something contains - are obscured. This is similar to the over-cautious safety warnings that nowadays clutter all user instructions of devices and tools. It should be left to user discretion whether to wear safety goggles when you use a hammer to hit a nail, for instance. Even if there is a one-in-a-million chance that a spark flies off and hits your eye.

barrkel 10y ago
The reason for labelling isn't just for health impact, though. It's also about being a responsible consumer. If you don't see what went into making a product, you can't use your purchase decision to vote on how you'd like the supply chain to be aligned. Personally I'm against the over-industrialization of the food supply. Industry wants consistent predictable products it can mass-produce; that's explicitly what I don't want. I don't want every tomato to taste exactly the same, year in year out, everywhere around the world. I want more diversity.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  That is a reasonable enough desire, but why make others do mandatory labeling to meet your requirements? The law should be the minimum requirement for health and environmental concerns, and if there's value in consumer choice on ethical grounds (such as that you want to avoid GM food, or want to have halal meat) that labeling can be left to the discretion of the manufacturer/provider/seller. Personally, I often try to avoid food labeled as "organic" (that being responsible for the most lethal food disaster in recent years, 50 people dead in Germany). Still, I don't want that it would be mandatory to label organic food as such.
  - barrkel 10y ago
    The single biggest moral problem with capitalism is that it relies too much on price to transmit information. If your decision to buy something comes down to evaluating its value to you, comparing that with the price, and purchasing it if it is both more valuable to you than the price and relatively better than the alternatives, then you're not acting morally. Inputs to products, like slavery, child labour, undemocratic governments right through to irresponsible use of antibiotics, are all obscured under this basis. In order to get pricing to have an impact on how products are made and inputs are chosen, the consumer needs to be informed. But the need for the consumer to be informed is in direct opposition to the interests of the producer: the producer wants to remove reasons for the consumer to reject the product. And this runs right along the supply chain to raw materials. If the consumer doesn't have information on how something is produced, and no alternatives are available with more information, how can they make their purchasing decision affect the whole supply chain? And let's not forget how pleasant it is to be unknowingly complicit in illegal or immoral actions that benefit you by price; what you don't know doesn't make you feel guilty. You got the product cheaply, do you really want to know why it was so cheap? Consumer psychology is part of the problem too: relying solely on pricing for information lets people get away with murder, indirectly. Thus I think mandatory labelling throughout the supply chain is absolutely vital for moral capitalism. People need to know to what extent their purchasing decisions are indirectly funding oppression and harm elsewhere.
  - mkesper 10y ago
    Can you please provide a link to that claim?
    - germanier 10y ago
      I assume they referred to this outbreak but I'm not sure how non-organic food could have prevented that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Germany_E._coli_O104:H4_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Germany_E._coli_O104:H4_o...
coredog64 10y ago
WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
- goodcanadian 10y ago
  For those unfamiliar, this label is EVERYWHERE. It was on my car; it was at the coffee shop; it was at the entrance to my job. EVERYWHERE to the point of meaninglessness.
VLM 10y ago
>Gelatin residuals have no health impacts. There are religious issues. There are no non-animal sources of gelatin, so that is an issue for vegans or vegetarians. I have absolutely no idea if gelatin used for juice filtering is kosher or halal. There do exist somewhat more expensive sources of vegetable based biopolymers that are superficially somewhat gelatin like, or there are other technologies to filter juice or whatever, but if none of it is going to be labeled anyway...
- unclenoriega 10y ago
  It seems to me there's room to have mandated, policed labeling for certain things (e.g. common allergens, calories, certain nutrients) and voluntary, tort-enforced labeling for more moral or religious concerns. That seems reasonable, but maybe I'm missing some practical problems. Evidenced by this comment section, one issue could be categorizing certain things like GMO and antibiotic use.

barrkel 10y ago

The reason for labelling isn't just for health impact, though. It's also about being a responsible consumer. If you don't see what went into making a product, you can't use your purchase decision to vote on how you'd like the supply chain to be aligned. Personally I'm against the over-industrialization of the food supply. Industry wants consistent predictable products it can mass-produce; that's explicitly what I don't want. I don't want every tomato to taste exactly the same, year in year out, everywhere around the world. I want more diversity.

ptaipale 10y ago
That is a reasonable enough desire, but why make others do mandatory labeling to meet your requirements? The law should be the minimum requirement for health and environmental concerns, and if there's value in consumer choice on ethical grounds (such as that you want to avoid GM food, or want to have halal meat) that labeling can be left to the discretion of the manufacturer/provider/seller. Personally, I often try to avoid food labeled as "organic" (that being responsible for the most lethal food disaster in recent years, 50 people dead in Germany). Still, I don't want that it would be mandatory to label organic food as such.
- barrkel 10y ago
  The single biggest moral problem with capitalism is that it relies too much on price to transmit information. If your decision to buy something comes down to evaluating its value to you, comparing that with the price, and purchasing it if it is both more valuable to you than the price and relatively better than the alternatives, then you're not acting morally. Inputs to products, like slavery, child labour, undemocratic governments right through to irresponsible use of antibiotics, are all obscured under this basis. In order to get pricing to have an impact on how products are made and inputs are chosen, the consumer needs to be informed. But the need for the consumer to be informed is in direct opposition to the interests of the producer: the producer wants to remove reasons for the consumer to reject the product. And this runs right along the supply chain to raw materials. If the consumer doesn't have information on how something is produced, and no alternatives are available with more information, how can they make their purchasing decision affect the whole supply chain? And let's not forget how pleasant it is to be unknowingly complicit in illegal or immoral actions that benefit you by price; what you don't know doesn't make you feel guilty. You got the product cheaply, do you really want to know why it was so cheap? Consumer psychology is part of the problem too: relying solely on pricing for information lets people get away with murder, indirectly. Thus I think mandatory labelling throughout the supply chain is absolutely vital for moral capitalism. People need to know to what extent their purchasing decisions are indirectly funding oppression and harm elsewhere.
- mkesper 10y ago
  Can you please provide a link to that claim?
  - germanier 10y ago
    I assume they referred to this outbreak but I'm not sure how non-organic food could have prevented that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Germany_E._coli_O104:H4_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Germany_E._coli_O104:H4_o...

coredog64 10y ago

WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.

goodcanadian 10y ago
For those unfamiliar, this label is EVERYWHERE. It was on my car; it was at the coffee shop; it was at the entrance to my job. EVERYWHERE to the point of meaninglessness.

VLM 10y ago

>Gelatin residuals have no health impacts. There are religious issues. There are no non-animal sources of gelatin, so that is an issue for vegans or vegetarians. I have absolutely no idea if gelatin used for juice filtering is kosher or halal. There do exist somewhat more expensive sources of vegetable based biopolymers that are superficially somewhat gelatin like, or there are other technologies to filter juice or whatever, but if none of it is going to be labeled anyway...

unclenoriega 10y ago
It seems to me there's room to have mandated, policed labeling for certain things (e.g. common allergens, calories, certain nutrients) and voluntary, tort-enforced labeling for more moral or religious concerns. That seems reasonable, but maybe I'm missing some practical problems. Evidenced by this comment section, one issue could be categorizing certain things like GMO and antibiotic use.