*Who was paying for it prior to GM? Why are we being forced to eat GM products if we don't want to*

Pelican, GM is now simply part of new farming technology. Just
like herbicides as invented, become part of new farming technology.
Just as fertilisers became part of new farming technology. We
don't list them all on labels.

You pay a premium for organics, you are free to pay a premium for
GM free.

Has it ever occured to you, that you are most likely eating
various genetic mutations, nearly every single day? For of course
mutations are part of nature. DNA is distorted in nature. It happens
in every kind of crop, GM or not.

When it comes to the huge list of industrial chemicals included in
processed foodstuffs, then there are indeed questions about health.

But what is also being shown is that devoted housewives have been
so busily cleaning spotlessly with every known chemical compound
imaginable, that their kids immune systems don't develop properly.
Unlike farm kids, who play and eat a bit of good old dirt :)

Dear Severin, Pelly,

I agree 100%!

"Traders have nothing to fear
from full disclosure unless
they have something to hide!"

cont'd ...

I question the motives of the
US biotech firms. The Australian
Government should not put the interests
of its citizens before the profits of
the American - multi-national corporations.

Free-trade indeed.

At whose expense?

Yabby

>>> Has it ever occured to you, that you are most likely eating
various genetic mutations, nearly every single day? For of course
mutations are part of nature. DNA is distorted in nature. It happens
in every kind of crop, GM or not. <<<

Yes, we know. We are not stupid.

The human race has been eating naturally occurring and deliberately bred produce for millenniums. What we haven't been eating is food altered at a molecular level. Just as we like to know whether food has been produced free of antibiotics, artificial fertilisers and the like, we, as consumers have right to information regarding how, where, when and even why something has been produced. I really don't get why you have a problem with people wanting information.

If you are buying a car, don't you find out as much as you can about it?

Man, you must have a major share portfolio full of dubious companies to protest so much against basic rights for the individual person.

Food that does not contain any GM product is rapidly becoming a niche market.

Forcing food items from other parts of the world to label their products for a tiny Australian market is essentially causing to incur huge costs for very little return.

Organic food growers could then ask for non organic food to be labelled, thus pushing the cost of niche market onto the 99% of food otherwise produced.

If people really want non GM product, then there is a niche market willing to pay for this.

The label "Containing no GM product" would then be a selling point.

However, the anti GM activists know that this is not so, and are attempting to make the cost of GM products uncompetitive.

The law is simple, forcing the labeling will automatically incur a trade tariff on all our food exports which will vastly out weigh the minuscule benefits to the minority that want the labeling.

SM
How can it make the product uncompetitive. This is just not true given all the other conditions now placed on companies to make accurate claims about country of origin and ingredient content (over a certain %).

Why is GM labelling any different?

The organic argument cannot be used in the same way because mass produced food has always been non-organic for the most part, we are not asking a large contingent of consumers to change their habits and expectations.

I agree that those companies labelling as GM free will benefit in the market but what is the difficulty in an OS company simply adding to an already busy label whether there is GM content. It can easily be included in the ingredients panel.