Should GMO Products be Labelled?

Harry Cho
Dempsey - Period 6
URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-gunlock/food-labeling-fatigue_b_6215052.html
Article Published: December 1st, 2014
Author: Julie Gunlock

Voters of both Oregon and Colorado voted "no" to labeling GMO products on shelves of markets. Many people want labels on their food to know if what they are buying is organic or genetically modified. Many GMO products' labels are unclear or unspecific. For example if chips are labeled "genetically modified", some labels will not show if the corn is modified or if the oil is modified. This will cause uncertainty of purchase and customers will most likely not purchase it. Another problem of labeling is some states might consider one food as a GMO, but another state might not consider it as a GMO. This can lead to confusion. Around 2/3 of foods that caused this confusion were freed from being labeled in those states. This leads to consumers being unaware of what they are eating which can lead to displeasure.

Another problem about labeling GMO products is the cost. According to the data, labeling GMO products will raise an average family's food cost by $500, which is ridiculously high for both food and the unnecessary food labels. This is a huge concern because it will not affect economically advanced people and residents, but many of the people living in the U.S are economically struggling and if this were to happen, then those needy people are in big trouble. If all GMO products were labeled, not only then people wouldn't feel like buying them after seeing what was modified, it the cost will increase as well. Although GMOs are tested and are proven to be 100% safe to eat, many people are ignorant of this fact and are only concerned about what is modified, whether it is good for them or not. This leads to the unnecessary arguments of labeling or even going back to producing GMO foods and products.

This article is relevant to Molecular Genetics, one of the topics we went over in our second term of biology class. This is specifically related to GMO products, a section our class went over. We specifically researched and even debated about the cons and pros about GMO foods and experimented to see which foods each group brought had GMOs or not. Although this article was not arguing about the effects of the use of GMO foods, it was still about GMO products and how people are debating to use them. It is amazing that just labeling GMO products can greatly affect the economy and that people are fighting over something that isn't really necessary to be fought over.