Whaddia u think about gentically modifried taters lol.

Hence a very good reason to avoid most processed foods. If you really want to know what is in your food and how it's raised, get to know the farmers that raise it, that you can take more responsibility for what you eat by taking the time to personally examine their farming practices. This equates to eating local, eating in season, putting up for winter, etc, which sounds a lot like a 'homesteading mindset'. And wow... what a way to encourage homestead farms, boost small farm income and local employment. All for the price of not buying a potato bred to not show bruising.

In the USA we grow feed/food. It meets certain levels of safety and handling. As it gets more processed and closer to put on someone's plate, the regulations and rules get tougher.

Anyhow, basic commodities like potato, corn, wheat, soybeans need to meet certain grading standards. There are differnt levels for how much foreign material (bits of stalk, weeds, dirt...) and how much contamination (mold, insect bits, discoloration, etc.) these crops need to meet.

If someone wants something special, over these approved, standard, fades of feed and food, then you get to pay for that 'over and above' level of labeling/ segregation.

Several of you say you want labels, would make it cheap and easy.

How?

We grow potatoes, corn, soybeans, wheat, harvest them off thousands of acres, haul them to a buying/ storage company located miles away where each crop is dumped in the same bin and stored.

Thn a feed mill or a flour processor or a potato chip maker calls and wants to buy some grain or potato, and trucks or trains are loaded up with the product from th big bins and shipped on.

How can we possibly label the grains or potatoes if they are this, or that, or the other thing?

Our system is designed to supply a lot of good feed and food cheaply, but sorted by grade, not by who grew it or what variaty it is.

There is no way to make a sense able labeling setup from where we are.

If you want something other than 'corn' then indeed you need to go seek out farmers, and truckers, and store age places that will manage your special crop all by itself, handle it separately, and will indeed have it labeled as to what exactly you want.

This will of course cost you extra. It is not like the normal food chain, it is all seperate, different.

There is no way to label the generic line of foods we have today. That is senseless. It doesn't work that way.

But, we do have labeling, and opportunities to buy labeled food, and ways to specify exactly what you want.

From your messages, you are doing exactly that?

And it is a good thing for you, isn't it?

Many food processors do -exactly- the same as you are doing. They offer contracts for eatable soybeans of certain varieties, certain white corn for flour making, certain potatoes, and so on. And they label their products accordingly.

So we already have the ability, and many food processors already do, demand special crops be grown and handled specially, and they label their stuff specially. We already have this, mostly on the food processing chain.

Why would you care, or want, the basic current feed/food supplies labeled any differently than they are now?

What would that gain you, or the farmer, or a customer going through the Walmart checkout? (Pretty sure the tortilla shells, chips, and potatoes in their basket actually came from a company that did specify and control exactly which soybeans, potatoes, and corn was used for their produce anyhow they don't buy common field corn and soybeans.)

most sugar these days comes from beets and corn, most of which is gmo. Sugar cane is being phased out in the USA, hotels are worth more in Hawaii, and returning the Everglades to native is deemed more important in Florida.

So what good does a label do, 'may contain gmo' on everything?

I do not understand folks that demand some sort of labeling on our current feed/food supply. What does it gain anyone?

The concept is already there, as you basically do yourself - you produce something a bit different, and charge for that, and label it so.

What more do we need?

Paul

I generally like the idea of a potato that doesn't show bruising. My feeling is that removing bruises on fruits and vegetables is mostly aesthetic -- it looks ugly, and in some cases it is mushy or doesn't taste as good. I did a little bit of Internet research and found separate sources stating that the health risk of eating bruised food is that bruises can act as an entry point for mold. But not all bruises are moldy, and not all moldy foods are bruised -- I would think you would need to check for bruises and mold separately in any case, so I don't think a lack of visible bruising would be a major health risk on that score. If the ugliness and mushiness were gone, I would not care if I ate bruised fruits/vegetables. The idea that "cellular damage" itself is bad to eat seems silly to me given that I chew my food, which I'm sure inflicts much more severe damage on the food than most bruises.

Like the gmo apple that doesn't go brown when cut, our food can now be harvested, stored and shipped and processed with less care given to handling. The beneficiaries are not the consumers. Yet of course the consumers are selfish to want a label.

I would want to know what food value is lost when the temperature, storage times and bumps/bruises are no longer a concern. Vitamin loss is a likely factor. Hey why not get cheap labour from Chinese farmers to grow spuds for us, shipping damage is no longer a concern... So what if our farmers lose jobs, it's just the market at work right?

I'm sure the hard core big-ag types frequenting this board don't mind the hard nasty (yet shipable) tomatoes with pink or icy white cores and will no doubt attest to their amazing keeping tendencies, but I worry that the food value has been completely lost. Not just nutritionally, but lacking palatibility.

__________________
Check out my farm/ranch blog - www.evansranch.ca

I do my part, I don't buy those hardball tomatoes! Ever. If I get a fast food sandwich, I specify no tomato because it's such a sorry excuse for a tomato. But somewhere, people are buying them by the thousands of tons or else they wouldn't keep on producing them.

Hard core big ag types.....I guess that would be the ones who appreciate an efficient and reliable food supply for the 330 million mouths to feed we have here in the US? People who have never known anything but an abundance of food.....complaining about it. Only in America.

__________________
It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with the simple pleasures and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong.
Laura Ingalls Wilder

I'll bet those people that are against GMO's get up every morning and take a pill. Think about that one.

Bob

MM... nope. But then again I am not knee jerk against them and see nothing wrong with these potatoes.

Like what? What kind of pill? Like an Rx from the pill pusher Big Pharma types?

I liked his explanation though I'm still not sure I like GMO's because of the unintended side effects (see my tomato example again). Also, I've no idea why it posts multiple times.

Bill Nye is dufus on his own but his writers are good. I suppose I don't see why we can't have things labeled and then make our decisions as we please. The market will decide in the end. Or those mosquitoes that didn't get eaten by bats in Nye's video will kill us all. Either way.

Progress is good. I'm not a Luddite or Amish... I have rubber tires. But I'd like it if I felt things were considered more than they are. Profit now at what long term costs? I don't know and I don't think many people can honestly claim to know, or even have an educated guess.