Vox: chipotle focussed on GMOs rather than food safety

[heyjude]

Was Chipotle too busy avoiding the fake dangers of GMOs to focus on actual food safety?

The news about Chipotle's food safety record keeps getting worse. In recent months, people in California, Washington state, Minnesota, and elsewhere have gotten sick after eating at Chipotle. Earlier this week, we learned that more than 100 Boston College students had become ill after eating at a local Chipotle. Then on Thursday, health officials closed a Chipotle location in Seattle due to repeated health code violations.

The run of bad news is ironic because Chipotle has actually spent a lot of time this year thinking about where its ingredients come from. Back in April, Chipotle became the first major restaurant chain to announce that all of its food was free of genetically modified organisms. Many customers saw that as a sign of progress — though others complained that some of its "GMO-free" meat came from animals fed GMO grains.

Yet study after study has found that GMO foods are perfectly safe. While genetically modified food sounds scary to a lot of people, it's been widely available in the United States for about two decades with no apparent ill effects.

So rather than pandering to groundless fears about GMO safety, Chipotle would have served its customers better by focusing on the very real dangers of food tainted with E. coli, norovirus, or salmonella. Theoretically, it should be able to do both, of course, but like any organization Chipotle has limited resources. A dollar it spends guarding against the overblown threat of GMOs is a dollar it can't devote to preventing actual health problems.

www.vox.com/business-and-finance/2015/12/12/9910642/chipotle-gmo-e-coli

[tiramisu]

This article has a good point. I'd much rather have genetically modified foods than e.coli. I also need to find the studies about GMO foods not paint a health risk, although I know sharing them with people who believe otherwise will probably go as well as sharing science with anti-vaxxers.

[tiramisu]

I have a hard time getting too freaked out about GMOs, although it seems like I should be from the tone with which they're talked about. Admittedly, I haven't done much research. I think for me it's hard to identify the distinction between current GMOs and the genetic modifications created by selective breeding over the years.

[tiramisu]

I don't judge people at all for avoiding GMO food. I also don't judge people for not. Maybe it's the scientists I have talked to about it who've made me feel less concerned, but I do understand that we don't know 100% the effects and won't for a long time. Heck, earlier this year I was dating a plant biologist who was researching (for a public institution) the effects of turning on and off certain genes. Which is the super simplified version, of course.

I think because people in my family (well, "direct line" so to speak) have generally been healthy, I have a fairly relaxed approach and just keep plugging along. I try to make good choices, but I'm also at the "we're all going to die and something's going to kill us" point where I just don't have as much passion left for this. I completely understand people having a different approach and perspective. I have, however, gotten sick of the alarmist way some people present the anti-GMO argument. (I don't mean anyone here.)

[ttt]

Anyone know what Chipotle's sick day policy is?

[zelda25]

Dec 13, 2015 17:15:45 GMT -5 ttt said:

Anyone know what Chipotle's sick day policy is?

I read a local article re: the norovirus outbreak in which a Chipotle rep said the employee in question had paid sick leave, but came to work with this, for whatever reason.

This piece is dumb. It's not as though plenty of other restaurants and food distributors that DON'T traffic in organic food haven't struggled with food borne pathogens. As long as we are not growing and preparing our own food (and even if we did, since so many of these problems are in the soil), this shit is going to happen.

Sent from my SPH-L720T using proboards

[klingklang77]

Dec 13, 2015 12:02:40 GMT -5 tiramisu said:

This article has a good point. I'd much rather have genetically modified foods than e.coli. I also need to find the studies about GMO foods not paint a health risk, although I know sharing them with people who believe otherwise will probably go as well as sharing science with anti-vaxxers.

 See that's the thing- - there are no studies to prove that they are safe. How do you prove something is 'safe'? 

Anti-GMO groups have been trying to prove that they are unsafe for a while. The studies that have come out have all been unreliable (Seralini study and that study with the pig stomachs). 

There was an article about animals using GMO feed a few months ago. I know it's Forbes, but this source explains it www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2014/09/17/the-debate-about-gmo-safety-is-over-thanks-to-a-new-trillion-meal-study/. 

Personally, I think being anti-GMO is harmful to other parts of the world where GMO crops (Golden Rice, for example) are so desperately needed. But it's a buzzword and a marketing tool at the moment. 

Mark Lynas has written a few good things about GMOs. He was previously against them as well. 

[ttt]

Dec 14, 2015 4:42:19 GMT -5 klingklang77 said:

Dec 13, 2015 12:02:40 GMT -5 tiramisu said:

This article has a good point. I'd much rather have genetically modified foods than e.coli. I also need to find the studies about GMO foods not paint a health risk, although I know sharing them with people who believe otherwise will probably go as well as sharing science with anti-vaxxers.

 See that's the thing- - there are no studies to prove that they are safe. How do you prove something is 'safe'? 

You can certainly have studies showing that there are no negative health effects from GMOs. There are piles of research studies showing that vaccines are safe, for example. That's what I have been asking to see, and I want to see them coming from sources not funded by Monsanto or the food industry. 

The actions of the food industry, not least their vehement lobbying efforts against labeling GMO foods so that consumers can at least choose for themselves, make it look very bad. That's not evidence that they're unsafe, obviously, but it certainly makes me unlikely to trust the assurances that "oh yeah, everything's fine, in fact, you don't even need to know about it, just trust us." 

[klingklang77]

Dec 14, 2015 7:39:40 GMT -5 ttt said:

Dec 14, 2015 4:42:19 GMT -5 klingklang77 said:

 See that's the thing- - there are no studies to prove that they are safe. How do you prove something is 'safe'? 

You can certainly have studies showing that there are no negative health effects from GMOs. There are piles of research studies showing that vaccines are safe, for example. That's what I have been asking to see, and I want to see them coming from sources not funded by Monsanto or the food industry. 

The actions of the food industry, not least their vehement lobbying efforts against labeling GMO foods so that consumers can at least choose for themselves, make it look very bad. That's not evidence that they're unsafe, obviously, but it certainly makes me unlikely to trust the assurances that "oh yeah, everything's fine, in fact, you don't even need to know about it, just trust us." 

When I say safe, I mean 100% absolutely safe. 

I don't know much about the funding for the vaccine studies, but I don't see how anything can be proven 100% safe. I mean vaccines are proven to save lives, yes, but how are they 100% safe (I'm not an anti-vaxxer, FWIW)? 

I don't see how it will ever be possible to prove that GMO food is completely safe. They also haven't come up with any studies that GMO food is unsafe, so there's that. 

I'm not a scientist in any shape or form, but I have read a bit on GMOs and most things I have read point to them being OK. Do you have any sources about how they are unsafe? I'm not being snarky here; I'd just like to see some non-biased sources as all the things I have seen are biased. But then again, a lot of sources are biased these days. 

[ttt]

Dec 14, 2015 7:57:57 GMT -5 klingklang77 said:

Dec 14, 2015 7:39:40 GMT -5 ttt said:

You can certainly have studies showing that there are no negative health effects from GMOs. There are piles of research studies showing that vaccines are safe, for example. That's what I have been asking to see, and I want to see them coming from sources not funded by Monsanto or the food industry. 

The actions of the food industry, not least their vehement lobbying efforts against labeling GMO foods so that consumers can at least choose for themselves, make it look very bad. That's not evidence that they're unsafe, obviously, but it certainly makes me unlikely to trust the assurances that "oh yeah, everything's fine, in fact, you don't even need to know about it, just trust us." 

When I say safe, I mean 100% absolutely safe. 

I don't know much about the funding for the vaccine studies, but I don't see how anything can be proven 100% safe. I mean vaccines are proven to save lives, yes, but how are they 100% safe (I'm not an anti-vaxxer, FWIW)? 

I don't see how it will ever be possible to prove that GMO food is completely safe. They also haven't come up with any studies that GMO food is unsafe, so there's that. 

I'm not a scientist in any shape or form, but I have read a bit on GMOs and most things I have read point to them being OK. Do you have any sources about how they are unsafe? I'm not being snarky here; I'd just like to see some non-biased sources as all the things I have seen are biased. But then again, a lot of sources are biased these days. 

No, you can never prove something 100% safe, but you can still show evidence that it is safe. And I think that when you want to introduce something new and uncertain to the food system - especially without consumers even knowing about it and without them being able to choose not to consume it - the burden is on you to show that it is safe first. We don't let drug companies just put drugs or medical technologies on the market and let them say "well, show me that it isn't safe." 

At the very least, they should let people choose whether or not they want to consume GMO products. With vaccines, there's a public health benefit - necessity, really - for everyone to get them. The benefits are clear, while the drawbacks are minimal at best, uncertain at worst. With GMOs, the drawbacks are unclear, but the benefits are also unclear, and they mostly accrue to the food companies themselves in the form of profits. As a consumer, I should be able to choose whether or not I want to take a possible (or at least perceived) health risk for the benefit of enriching food company profits. 

[sushi]

I'm with tiramisu. We've been genetically modifying foods forever. And I don't just mean through selective breeding. We've blasted seeds with cyanide, xrays, and all sorts of things. I'm sure a century ago that was scary sounding, but today we've totally accepted our ruby red grapefruits and triticale. Those were just a couple of the many many many products produced through artificial genetic modification (as opposed to selective breeding that I think everyone is ok with).

GMO means a specific type, viral vector, but, scientifically, it should be no scarier than the others.

There actually is a ton of science on the safety, and I'll dig it up when I'm at a real computer.

[msmerymac]

Regarding modern human health, specifically in the US, I think it's absolutely understandable that people don't trust the food industry. SOMETHING is going on. Is it our food supply? Modern foods and "almost-foods" and the combined ingredients we now eat? Changing ratios of macronutrients and micronutrients? Our own sedentary lifestyles? Environmental factors? Gut bacteria? Who knows. But I don't blame people who just want to eat regular, antibiotic-free chicken, and not franken-chicken that really shouldn't exist in nature.

I also have NO evidence for this, but regardless of how well Chipotle treats their employees, I would absolutely not be surprised if the culture was such that you can't call out unless you are dying, or you have to get your shift covered. Because if you're working in a service industry, you can't have 2 people call out and be short-handed during lunch.

[Deleted]

I don't have much issue with GMOs. I do have a huge issue with some shitty companies that produce GMO seeds, though.

Americans in general have a pretty crappy way of looking at food, in that we don't really care HOW food gets to our grocery store, as long as it's there when we want it. There's an entire industry that creates this messed up view of food in American culture. I really try not to partake of that industry on a regular basis, and that also means I inadvertently avoid a lot of GMOs.

But sometimes I just need Cheetos.

[meshaliuknits]

Dec 14, 2015 13:51:49 GMT -5 papiercherri said:

I don't have much issue with GMOs. I do have a huge issue with some shitty companies that produce GMO seeds, though.

This right here.

[LoveTrains]

Dec 13, 2015 17:15:45 GMT -5 ttt said:

Anyone know what Chipotle's sick day policy is?

Massachusetts requires paid sick time for basically everyone. ( in regards to Biston incident)