Another not so sweet victory for the Anti-GMO movement

[HuckleB]

http://fafdl.org/blog/2016/04/12/another-not-so-sweet-victory-for-the-anti-gmo-movement/

"...

Last week it was reported that demand for cane sugar is up, and outstripping supply. This comes as major food manufacturers are starting to reformulate their products in reaction to pending GMO labeling laws, in Vermont and potentially from the US Congress.

I’m sure many critics of biotech crops will see this as a step in the right direction. However, it will be interesting to see how they justify this shift. As it’s gone out of fashion to worry publicly about potential and imagined health risk of biotech in respectable circles, the current tactic is to opine about the environmental impacts of biotech crops. The problem here is that it’s nearly impossible to argue that switching from the biotech sugar beets that currently make up the bulk of the US sugar supply to sugarcane is in any way a net benefit to the environment. Sugarcane is an environmentally intensive crop. It requires large amounts of water and often threatens local aquifers. It is a tropical crop which requires the deforestation of vital, biodiverse habitat to allow for new production.

The Guardian in 2014:

Few commodities have a darker history than sugarcane. A labour-intensive monocrop that once relied on slavery, it has more recently encompassed child labour, land-grabs and [PDF] the displacement of communities. A notoriously “thirsty” crop, it depletes aquifers and pollutes seas with chemical fertiliser and pesticide run-off. The common practice of burning fields accounts for 20% of the crop’s CO2 emissions.

...Just as when Chipotle switched from biotech ingredients that used less insecticides and better herbicides to non-GMO ingredients that used more insecticides and less than better herbicides, the faux environmentalism of the Anti-GMO movement comes into greater and greater focus as they rack up another real world victory. Or should I say, “victory”."


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The more one sees the actual real world affects that Vermont's labeling law, the more one has to recognize the ludicrous nature of the anti-GMO movement.

[trotsky]

1. Corn and sugar beets can be grown throughout the US.

Sugarcane cannot. In addition to the burden on the environment from just growing the stuff, you also have to add on the costs (monetary and environmental) of transportation! Whereas sugar from corn and beets is already in the country.

[progressoid]

2. There is just a wee bit of irony too.

I WANT MY UNHEALTHY BAG OF SUGAR TO BE NON-GMO!!!! Kind of like the glyphosate in wine thing.


I drove by a sugar beet plant in Minnesota once. Smelled like poo.