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alastair | 13 years ago

Do you have an example of this already happening?

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Alex3917|13 years ago

The obvious one is that it's illegal for food companies to advertise whether or not their products are GMO:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/18/fda-labeled-free-modif...

There are a lot of other food safety best practices that the FDA has effectively banned as well though. For example the movie Food Inc. explains the issues surrounding bacteria in beef.

dingfeng_quek|13 years ago

While the regulation on GMO labels is evident, it's hard to decide whether GMO is good or bad, and whether it is right or wrong to encourage or discourage GMO.

Bacteria in beef is problematic to justify because the bad outcomes tend to be low-probability events, and the events can often be attributed to other causes, so it's hard to pin it down on food safety practices.

Try something more clear-cut, like the history of trans-fat regulation as compared to when the adverse health-effects of trans-fat were identified, and whether trans-fat was allowed as a food additive with compelling evidence for its safety (by appeal to long-term epidemiological data or otherwise). Trans-fat is also clearer because the government has encouraged (with marketing dollars) its consumption over other kinds of fat.

I'm sure there are many better examples than GMO labeling and bacteria in food.