Actress Gwyneth Paltrow talks with Sen. The Iron Man co-star and her mother headed to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to find out from the U.S. government’s source exactly what is in their food. And more than 2,000 independently reviewed studies have found the food safe to eat. The bill appears to set up a review program under which GMO food could only be sold with FDA approval, but there’s laughably minimal funding for it – $2 million a year – and the FDA would be largely dependent on material supplied by producers to determine whether a food is safe or not.
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Brooke Alpert, a registered dietitian, agrees with the celebrities in this movement.
This is a very serious Right to Know issue that a NY-Times poll indicates 93 percent favoring the labeling of all GMOs. However, an independent study conducted by Kai Robinson, a consultant for “Just Label It!”, found that food product prices vary according to demand and not necessarily their ingredients.
[Image via Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images].
The legislation comes as a response to states like Vermont and Maine that have required food makers to disclose whether ingredients come from genetically modified food. The legislation that Congress is considering will prohibit any states from labeling GMOs and will make federal labeling voluntary, which is what we have already, and not a single product is labeled as containing genetically engineered ingredients.
I can’t say that it puts me 100% at ease, but if nothing else there are at least some serious scientists examining the questions surrounding this topic.
While Paltrow stuck to the more-digestible party line (that the science is still out on GMOs and that it’s a matter of giving consumers a choice), Danner went further.
But while labels for genetically modified foods might seem sensible – or at the very least, harmless – the issue obscures some very important facts about the GMO debate. One of the profoundly adverse consequences of the House bill (HR 1599) is its masking of GMO presence in foods, another of the consequences that has escaped public attention is its attendant obscuring of adverse events attributable to GMOs.
The Just Label It activists are fighting the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act, which passed last month and blocked states from requiring labels identifying food made with GMOs. Food manufacturers say the First Amendment protects their right to stay quiet on genetic engineering. “We are confident the Senate will stand with science and American families rather than the extreme agendas of Hollywood elites and that common sense and scientific consensus will win out over media spectacle”.
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The actress – who has two children, Apple and Moses, with ex-husband Chris Martin once boasted about her strict macrobiotic diet but adopts a more relaxed approach these days.
