Will the Obama administration seriously regulate GMOs?

Seems Americans are completely unaware of a lot of things.

The average American seems completely unaware of the GMO issue. In Europe it's a huge topic, and soruce of many front page headlines. The fact that this report barely made the US news is appalling, but probably had a lot to do with the ad dollars the US food industry spends on print and TV media buys.

nobody will ever get tough on this issue because there are way too many lobbyists in Washington that won't ever let it happen.

QUESTION: WHY THE HELL WOULD ANY SANE PERSON WANT SOME SORT OF UNKNOWN CHEMICAL IN THEIR FOOD!? Food should just be plain food, not fast food and definitely NOT modified by genes of a fish or spider or bovine or whatever else these insane farmers have decided to add to their crop! Look at the effects of these modified foods, allergic reactions, decreased birth rates, death at times, and OBESITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MY MESSAGE TO YOU: Read your labels before you buy anything and if there's something on it that you don't know or can't read because it's too long or can't pronounce, also look out for sucralose or any FAKE kind of sugar, this includes SPLENDA and ASPARTAME! These FAKE SUGARS are harmful to your body since they have chemicals in them that are toxic! It took 3 tries for aspartame to be approved by the FDA, and on that third attempt, it looked like there was so bribing or screwing with the FDA.
Overall, don't trust anyone/anything (including commercials and that "low calorie" label), read your labels and you're good to go!

It is like the climate crisis and actually anything unknown where those who need to know are actually part of it. Once you know you are part of the problem, you are morally bound to be part of the solution. That seems to be too cumbersome a task for many these days, and it is sad. And as you mentioned, that man trampled to death in Walmart for a flat screen TV sale speaks volumes of where this country is today and it isn't a good place. And while I still would hope for this post to be filled by a progressive minded experienced person not aligned with that corporate industrial mindframe, even I know in my heart that will more than likely not happen. But I won't give up either. I have people in my life I care about and I love this planet as I know you and others do. Giving up is then simply not an option.

I wish there were more people interested in this topic. I cannot believe that this lack of interest is caused simply by not getting the "headline" news. I believe it goes much deeper and it comes from a place, which is part of the consumer/marketing agenda, which is controlled by the Greedy Corporations.

Those same entities now feed us, entertain us, treat our illness and give us pills, educate us, and govern us; they have managed to weave a web of which most folks haven't a clue. The peril that lies ahead is for many, too heavy to ponder and worse they don't want to know. Thus articles of news about meaningless dribble take top spots daily in our world.

We have arrived at a place in history, where the creature comforts are more important than life itself. Think of the man trampled to death at Walmart for what? two or three hundred dollar sale items? That is what life is today and the distant drum is getting louder, just like the genocide of the Indigenous Native Americans, who once owned this land, they too were either taken hostage (reservations) or killed off (like my own gr gr grandmother).

We are becoming the modern POW world, and we don't even know it, (most don't).

I will not give up, but I don't think government will save of either.

The question is, what if he continues on the same path? Will he be held accountable for it? We couldn't afford to allow it to be ignored, but I sincerely think he could appoint the CEO of Monsanto to the post of Sec of Agriculture and people would be OK with it because it's Obama. I hope I'm wrong on that too. This is actually one of the most important appointments he will make at this juncture in time which will relate directly to healthcare, the environment, the economy, and most definitely climate change as Monsanto is exacerbating that as well with their "ethanol" investments in Brazil.

The big issue as well is transgenic contamination of traditional crops and its effects on health, and also Monsanto's (and I am sure other biotech companies') desire to see small family farms out of business by using lawsuits and bullying tactics, and their Gestapo tactics to keep foods from being labelled. As the article states, for him and his administration to satisfactorily revamp agriculture in this country he will have to stand up to those special interests he claimed he would stand up against during his campaign. Were they just words or did he mean it? This pick is one sure way we will know the truth.

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear as though this is very important to many people, and actually that is a big mistake. This technology which is flawed and has not been tested properly on the human population before being released into our environment can potentially cause an environmental and health catastrophe down the road and it may have started already. This is also a national security issue as well because whoever controls the seeds of life controls life itself. The fact that Supreme Court decision bolstered by Monsanto lawyer Clarence Thomas has now put a patent on life itself is very disturbing and something we should all be concerned and actually outraged about for it begs the question for the future: does that mean that any organism that becomes part of their patent become their property as well? I don't intend to walk through life with MONSANTO stamped on my forehead!

You would also think the American media would give this more attention, but as the article also states it was merely a blip on the radar screen. Another illustration that then relates back also to the Democratic process in this country and the preoccupation with sensationalistic insignificant news over the issues and events that people need to know about for their own livelihoods.

Wasn't it a 5-4 vote by the Supreme Court that set a new precedent by allowing a life form to be patented - seeds in this case? Monsanto is nothing more than a heartless corporation out to make as much money as possible by becoming a major-if not the only- supplier of the world's food. We can grow much safer food by going organic.

The FDA & CDC are completely incompetent at keeping its citizens safe from the growing amounts of environmental & manmade contaminants that are permeating the world while reluctantly pushing for listing product ingredients. Let’s hope Obama will do the right thing by understanding the problems & then making the wisest choices for long overdue solutions.

Plain & simple-Consumers Beware!

Another call for Obama to take this seriously.

Quote from article I wholeheartedly agree with:

As Pollan told me: "Even if you don't think agriculture is a high priority, given all the other problems we face, we're not going to make progress on the issues Obama campaigned on - health care, climate change and energy independence - unless we reform agriculture."

Also from the article:
In her Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds, Claire Hope Cummings deftly lays out how the three agencies go about their task. The USDA applies the Plant Pest Act to new GMO crops, which "excludes the process of genetic engineering from consideration," Cummings writes. Moreover, the agency relies completely on the seed companies themselves for information on ecological risk. Thus far, the industry has given itself a clean bill of health.

As for the EPA, it looks at only one kind of GMO: those engineered to contain a pesticide. That excludes oversight of widely used herbicide-tolerant (so-called Roundup Ready) corn and soy. Instead, it draws attention to GM crops like Monsanto's ubiquitous Bt corn, engineered to contain the pesticide properties of the naturally occurring Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) bacteria.

But here, too, the technology gets a pass. Operating under the principles laid down by Quayle, the EPA assumes that since Bt is safe for humans, Bt corn must be, too, Cummings reports. But there are key differences. "While natural Bt is activated only in the guts of susceptible insects, GMO Bt is always active and constantly exuded from all parts of the plant," Cummings writes.

The FDA, finally, regulates under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. When the agency decides an item is "generally regarded as safe," it passes into the food supply without the need for testing. Astonishingly, before ever testing a GMO product, the FDA declared the entire category "generally regarded as safe."

Hope for Change?

Reviewing this material, a conclusion emerges: Our government essentially doesn't regulate GMO food.

Yet as the Austrian study shows, GMOs may well carry significant health risks. (Ecological impacts, such as the rise of herbicide-tolerant "superweeds," have also been linked to GMOs.) The study contains a statement I find nearly as startling as the drop in fertility it reports: Twelve years since the introduction of GMO crops, "Only [a] few studies have been conducted to assess 'toxicity' and 'long term effects' of transgenic crops in warm-blooded animals." In other words, it's not just that the U.S. government is failing to test the health effects of GMOs; no one else is really testing, either.
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No testing, no labelling, no disclosure. This is simply UNACCEPTABLE.