Russia may totally ban GMO products

Russian parliamentarians will submit to the State Duma a bill, which severely restricts imports of genetically modified agricultural products, and completely bans their domestic production, RT reports.

This bill is an amendment to the existing law “On Safety and Quality of Alimentary Products”, which sets norms for the maximum content of transgenic and genetically modified components in food. The powers to establish that norm, go to the government and products with excessive content of GMO components should be banned for turnover and imports.

Evgeny Fyodorov, the author of the bill and a member of the United Russia party, says that it does not suppose a total ban on imports of genetically modified products, but imposes government control on it.

The head of Russia’s Organic Farming Union, Yakov Lyubovedsky, believes that the passing of the bill would show if the Duma can defend the interests of population. He also added that GMO was an experiment on humanity itself and that the industry could do very well without genetically-enhanced plants and animals.

The bill will be submitted to the State Duma in two weeks’ time and its authors claim its chances of passing are very high.

You avoid the question

No, I avoid nothing, especially the fact that you can't seem to grasp that everything you eat has been genetically modified over time. Why you want to force businesses to state the obvious on their labels is a mystery. Maybe the reason your side can't even manage to win with this nonsense in places like California and Washington is because, unlike yourself, most people get it.

You`ve placed your personal faith in these super foods, so now put these super foods to the test.

Maybe you missed the reports about how we're living longer today than at any other time in our history. If genetic modification in food is so bad, where are the ill effects?

But beyond the obvious lack of logic on your part, are you saying, as a conservative, that you want to force manufacturers to add additional labeling to their foods to address a problem that doesn’t even exist? Conservatives shouldn't be offering costly solutions that are wholly disproportionate to a nonexistent problem.

Labeling mandates based solely on an alleged consumers' "right to know," rather than on a product’s measurable characteristics, is in violation of the Constitution.

You are not allowed to demonize a product, or to create fear about a product, unless you can prove that there is a problem with the nutrition or safety of that product. You guys are big on whining, yet can offer nothing in the way of proof. The organic food industry supports your efforts, though, and they are doing all they can to foment anti-GMO hysteria. That way, more and more people can pay higher and higher prices for food that delivers absolutely zero additional benefits.

Every suggestion you've made here is anti-conservative in nature. Why you would openly confess your faith in far left causes on a forum such as this, and then throw your lot in with the likes of Greenpeace, begs the question: Are you really a conservative?

Yes, No, Maybe so? We're waiting......

At the heart of Conservatism is the basic right to self determination as stated and evolved by the likes of the Immanuel Kant, John Locke, or the Founders. Whether GMO are the super foods you think they are or the death foods others may say they are is not the point. People have a basic right to know what they and others are doing with and to their bodies and that means information which includes labeling of ingredients, especially if those ingredients have been altered at their raw stage such as the GMO crops.

The rest of your argument is simply wrong or specious, Examples: the genetic modifications done to crops before the introduction of recombinant techniques have not been lab induced trans-domain genetic introductions but simple breeding selections, and yes, life spans have been increasing due to long term advances in, take your pick: the development of asepsis, refrigeration, vaccines, modern infrastructure such as sewage or water treatment, the list goes on, but GMO tech is only a recent development. The rest of your statement is little more than ad hominem opinion, I will not dignify it with a response.

The US Courts ruled on this a long time ago: “Were consumer interest alone sufficient,” the court wrote, “there is no end to the information that states could require manufacturers to disclose about their production methods.”

The foods you eat every day contain trace amounts of dangerous chemicals, but because we know the dose makes the poison, we are not afraid of these trace chemicals in our food and, therefore, don't demand the food industry list every single one of them on every single package. That you want the government to force industry to list things present in the foods that you can't offer any legitimate evidence of being dangerous, is very telling about how you see the role of government.....big government.

You see, you are not allowed to demonize a product, or to create fear about a product, unless you can prove that there is a problem with the nutrition or safety of that product. This is what the left does. They create lies about a person or product and then use the media to demonize them/it. You want to do the same thing. That makes you no better than they are.

The fact that you can offer any proof that GMO food compromises the nutritional value or safety of those foods places you in the same league as the global warming alarmists and Greenpeace. Nice company you keep.

The rest of us shouldn't have to pay more for food simply because a bunch of scientific illiterates believe all the BS they read on the internet and don't have the education, or in this case, the common sense, to separate fact from fiction.

Again, everything you eat has been altered from its "raw stage" so I don't know how you manage to stay alive, by eating, while remaining consistent. Truth is, you can't be consistent when you promote nonsense like this.

You clearly don't understand modern bioengineering. Using a gene gun simply gets you where you want to go faster, and more accurately, than with selective breeding methods. As a matter of fact, selecting just one gene to be modified is much less risky than utilizing hybridization, because we are not messing with the other genes. With selective breeding, we are making all sorts of changes without really knowing what the outcome will be. Not so with modern methods of genetic engineering. To claim or suggest that modern genetic engineering is riskier than traditional methods cannot be supported by science. Like with so many of the anti-GMO crowd, it is nothing more than feelings.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.