What do you want the label to say? A moderately detailed label, that says "This product is a GMO containing genes X, Y, and Z, from Q Lab at B Company, manufac

What do you want the label to say? A moderately detailed label, that says "This product is a GMO containing genes X, Y, and Z, from Q Lab at B Company, manufactured on Y/M/D". This is a good label. A label that says "This is a GMO" is a bad label. It's a bad label because it succumbs to one of two failure modes. It's an unstable equilibrium. The first failure mode is (I suspect) the underlying motivation for pro-labelling folks. By putting a black box warning label on things, they want to nudge people away from them. The reason this is bad, is because "GMO" is a very large category, and different GMOs have different risk profiles. My personal favourite go-to example, since my girlfriend is diabetic, is insulin. Insulin is mass produced by genetically modified E.Coli. Not only is there no argument whatsoever that this is dangerous, it's necessary for her to live. On the other hand, take roundup-ready. Roundup-ready could be dangerous, because a pesticide-resistant plant will get more pesticides used on it. Creating one label, explicitly as a warning label, that encapsulates a category this broad is misleading. The second failure mode is the exact opposite: Prop 65 warnings[1]. Lets say that we get warning labels, but the economic case for GMOs is so strong that people start routinely ignoring them. You end up with a situation where everything is labeled WARNING! CANCER^W GMOS! but nobody takes it seriously. This is a failure mode, both because it erodes confidence in public regulatory authorities and institutions (which generally exist to protect us), and it causes people to discount legitimate warnings. Like when I got a prop 65 warning about my apartment and assumed it was bullshit, only to find out (while mounting things to the wall) that it was a warning for lead paint and holy shit don't do anything to the walls without a face mask ---- As a compromise, I'm 100% for labels that seek an informational role instead of a cautionary one. Like how my coke zero has a warning label for PKU[2] consumers: "CONTAINS PHENYLALANINE!". If products were required to list any artificially inserted genes as ingredients in their ingredients list, that would also be great! But ultimately, I don't think this would ever happen. Maybe I'm overly cynical, but my belief is that the people advocating for labels, want the simple black box warning label. They think all GMOs are categorically bad, want to warn people away, and seek to create a moral panic as an effective way of doing this. I think this is dangerous, because not all GMOs are created equal. After all, GMO rice saves 2/3 of a million children in developing countries every year [3]. I would not want to throw that baby out with the modified bathwater ---- [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_65_(1986) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_65_(1986... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylketonuria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylketonuria [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice