In a Wall Street Journal Opinion piece, a California Agriculture Education official says farmers and the food industry needs to stand up for GMO’s by labeling them.
Richard Sexton, Chair of the University of California-Davis Agriculture Department, along with his son Steve, a public policy professor at Duke University, wrote the opinion piece.
They say labeling GMO’s could be the best way to make consumers confront their irrational fears and stamp out public ignorance.
By labeling GMO’s, the pair says consumers will realize they have been eating GMOs for years without adverse effect, adding consumers simply need to be educated about their food.
The opinion piece cited Rutgers University research from 2013 that says 90 percent of Americans want GMO’s labeled, yet when researchers ask them to list the food characteristics they want labeled, only seven percent name GMOs.
Further, a 2015 survey by Oklahoma State University found that 80 percent of respondents would require labels on foods containing DNA, even though all foods contain DNA.
Concluding the opinion, they say once consumers understand that their own experiences with GMO foods demonstrate the technology’s safety, they will choose science over fear mongering.
