Europe, Boring Until it's Not

[Speaker to Animals]

It was our greatest movie, though.

[Montegriffo]

You mean renting a movie set in Nevada and paying all the "astronauts" to keep quiet?

That's labellous, I hope you can back that up with facts. Preferably on the packaging.

[nmoore63]

Oh to be naive again.

The government shut down a man for selling skim milk as "Skim Milk."

He had to spend $400,000 to win the battle to sell skim milk.

If the government can fuck up "what is skim milk" they sure as shit can fuck up "what is the carbon footprint of x"

What the hell does that have to do with printing a number on labels?

Nothing. It’s a feminist/Marxist plot.

Everything.

[DBTrek]

Where's that side of the can do attitude which put a man on the moon?

Reserved for heroic endeavors like putting a man on the moon.


There can always be a debate about whether accurate information related to food products should appear on food labels.
This debate is not that.

[BjornP]

DB, is your primary opposition to the idea carbon footprint labelling on a product either:

A: Based on the argument that your government cannot be entrusted to write/oversee the labelling? As in that they will either not be honest about the labelling, or they will not bother to put in the neccesary work to make it trustworthy?

or

B: The notion that there even could be such a thing as a carbon footprint, or that one could measure the environmental impact, of any given product? In which case, it's more of a belief issue, in which case government should butt out, on principle?

C: Something else.

I expect it is A. So, going by the assumption that A is your argument, and going by your statement that you're ok with government currently overseeing the nutritional value labelling on food products, why would you trust government with accurately informing the consumer on one issue (nutritional value), but not the other (environmental impact)? What would it take for you to trust a government agency to provide (what you would consider) reliable, environmental impact labelling?

Fife's been posting some photos, presumebly to highlight that one can call one's product "healthy" even if it's essentially a bowl of breakfast candy. I don't know if he thinks it's the government that placed the "This product can help lower cholesterol!" info on the Cheerios box, I would hazard a guess and say it's the company behind Cheerios. This, however, highlights that a company can choose to emphasize say one ingridient in their product, like say how much... I dunno, starch, there is in their chocolate cookies, and then label how good starch is for... I dunno, eyesight? Even if that product has all its ingredients and nutritional value labelled. Technically speaking, that's not outright lying. It's just blatant manipulation via selective focus on selected facts. Which brings me back to the issue of carbon footprint labelling, because if a company can persuade gullible consumers its Oreos are "healthy" or at least not as unhealthy as common sense would dictate, the same company could choose to play up how green they were... despite having the carbon footprint labelling printed somewhere (in tiny print) on their product.

----

And Fife, I am not going to ask you about carbon footprint labelling at all, but since you posted those photos of "healthy" sugar products... Let's assume that no government agency is involved in the labelling of nutritional value on food products. Let's assume that we live in your ideal world, and you're buying your groceries. How, or what, would or does it take for you to trust that the information on a food product is true? And no, this isn't a "gotcha!" attempt or me trying to get you to realize how fantastic government controlling everything is. This is me wondering simply about the things I am saying I wonder about: What does it take for you to trust that the ingridients and/or nutritional value on a product are trustworthy? Is it repeated use of the product, word of mouth?

An example: In place of a government agency, would you entrust a private, user/consumer-funded laboratory with any labelling obligations? With companies who didn't want to cooperate with your private lab, not being legally obligated to cooperate. That way you only entrust your money going to verify wether a food product is safe or healthy based on a voluntary basis, and the food manufacturer is not forced to put nutritional value on his product. The market, the consumers, may want him to and he may lose money and consumer trust if he chooses not to subject his products to testing, but he isn't forced to unless he signs a contract with the privately funded lab. Would trust the information on your food products, then?

[TheReal_ND]

It's A. Our regulation industries have always been and always will be a pack of crooks. Much like a labor union. Not sure if you have those over there lol

PS. Upton Sinclair was a lying sensationalist faggot

[Montegriffo]

Does anyone still think cigarettes are good for you like the adverts told us back in the 50s? After all it is the government that makes them put warnings on the packet.
Surely it's just some government plot to deprive us of choice.
I mean, we can still buy cigarettes if we choose to ignore the information printed on them.
As I understand it, it is going to be a traffic light system. No precise numbers just a guide to which are the best and worst products for the environment and animal welfare.
Are you running scared of being informed because you might find out just how bad that cheeseburger is and be made to choose between a snack and your children's future?
I'm still not understanding why you need to stay uninformed.

[BjornP]

Does anyone still think cigarettes are good for you like the adverts told us back in the 50s? After all it is the government that makes them put warnings on the packet.
Surely it's just some government plot to deprive us of choice.
I mean, we can still buy cigarettes if we choose to ignore the information printed on them.
As I understand it, it is going to be a traffic light system. No precise numbers just a guide to which are the best and worst products for the environment and animal welfare.
Are you running scared of being informed because you might find out just how bad that cheeseburger is and be made to choose between a snack and your children's future?
I'm still not understanding why you need to stay uninformed.

Try and at least understand why someone might be skeptical of this, aside from a simplistic: "Oh, you just want to stay uninformed!" strawman.

Let's take your tobacco example: If you had reason to trust that your government was in bed with the tobacco industry and, while they did require the industry to label their products, they allowed the tobacco industry to vastly downplay or manipulate the facts of tobacco smoking, how much more "informed" are consumers?

Or, let's use an even less insiduous, less conspiratorial what-if: What if your government agencies were simply not very competent, not very reliable, and the tobacco industry much better at outsmarting government than vice versa, thereby again resulting in that the tobacco industry got to downplay or manipulate consumers? Are consumers getting more informed now?

All governments of the world are not the same. They're not all as efficient, not all as trustworthy, not all equally corrupt. Deserved or not, Americans do not trust their government. Try thinking of the discussion less as: "Oh, you just don't want to be informed" and more of a "Oh. you don't trust your government to accurately inform you". Could be a better starting point for a discussion.

[Ph64]

DB, is your primary opposition to the idea carbon footprint labelling on a product either:

A: Based on the argument that your government cannot be entrusted to write/oversee the labelling? As in that they will either not be honest about the labelling, or they will not bother to put in the neccesary work to make it trustworthy?

or

B: The notion that there even could be such a thing as a carbon footprint, or that one could measure the environmental impact, of any given product? In which case, it's more of a belief issue, in which case government should butt out, on principle?

C: Something else.

I expect it is A. So, going by the assumption that A is your argument, and going by your statement that you're ok with government currently overseeing the nutritional value labelling on food products, why would you trust government with accurately informing the consumer on one issue (nutritional value), but not the other (environmental impact)? What would it take for you to trust a government agency to provide (what you would consider) reliable, environmental impact labelling?

Fife's been posting some photos, presumebly to highlight that one can call one's product "healthy" even if it's essentially a bowl of breakfast candy. I don't know if he thinks it's the government that placed the "This product can help lower cholesterol!" info on the Cheerios box, I would hazard a guess and say it's the company behind Cheerios. This, however, highlights that a company can choose to emphasize say one ingridient in their product, like say how much... I dunno, starch, there is in their chocolate cookies, and then label how good starch is for... I dunno, eyesight? Even if that product has all its ingredients and nutritional value labelled. Technically speaking, that's not outright lying. It's just blatant manipulation via selective focus on selected facts. Which brings me back to the issue of carbon footprint labelling, because if a company can persuade gullible consumers its Oreos are "healthy" or at least not as unhealthy as common sense would dictate, the same company could choose to play up how green they were... despite having the carbon footprint labelling printed somewhere (in tiny print) on their product.

----

And Fife, I am not going to ask you about carbon footprint labelling at all, but since you posted those photos of "healthy" sugar products... Let's assume that no government agency is involved in the labelling of nutritional value on food products. Let's assume that we live in your ideal world, and you're buying your groceries. How, or what, would or does it take for you to trust that the information on a food product is true? And no, this isn't a "gotcha!" attempt or me trying to get you to realize how fantastic government controlling everything is. This is me wondering simply about the things I am saying I wonder about: What does it take for you to trust that the ingridients and/or nutritional value on a product are trustworthy? Is it repeated use of the product, word of mouth?

An example: In place of a government agency, would you entrust a private, user/consumer-funded laboratory with any labelling obligations? With companies who didn't want to cooperate with your private lab, not being legally obligated to cooperate. That way you only entrust your money going to verify wether a food product is safe or healthy based on a voluntary basis, and the food manufacturer is not forced to put nutritional value on his product. The market, the consumers, may want him to and he may lose money and consumer trust if he chooses not to subject his products to testing, but he isn't forced to unless he signs a contract with the privately funded lab. Would trust the information on your food products, then?

Ok, well, on the topic of food labelling... Ingredients rarely give amounts, just listed in order of most to least.

Nutrition information I'm guessing is an average - if a McD's hamburger is "450 calories", the only real way to determine that accurately by testing is destructive, I'm betting its really between say 435-465 per actual burger (given "manufacturing" differences),they just give you an "accurate enough" amount to use in rough calculations.

Now let's take "carbon footprint" labelling - as was mentioned there's 3000 mile bananas, 800 mile oranges, etc. But that depends on your physical location, if it's 3000 miles to me here in CT, it might only be 1000 miles to someone in CA, or maybe they all get shipped 1000 miles to TX, to a distribution/import plant, and then shipped 500 miles to L.A. but 1500 to CT. Mind you are bananas really aren't "labelled" but I suppose every store could slap a tag on the bin they're in on "estimated carbon footprint". Is that per banana? It obviously doesn't cost much more in carbon to ship one banana vs 10 on the same vehicles.

But let's pick something that *is* labelled - let's say a can of U.S. grown sweet corn to keep it simple, grown in... I dunno, Iowa let's say, canned in a plant in Montana. So you have to account, presumably estimated, for plowing/planting/harvesting fuels, pesticide/fertilizer spraying, watering, etc, in production "carbon footprint", plus transportation to the canning plant, processing/canning... But ok, assuming your doing a good faith estimate you could do that. Then at the canning plant they also label the cans - oops, wait, there's still all that carbon that's going to go into getting that can to you... Me in CT presumably being more than someone in MT or WA, even more to someone in FL, and way more to someone in Hawaii.

Do we ignore that? Or does the canning plant need to print different labels for every state? Seems costly and inefficient (and uses more carbon footprint), plus if I buy that can of corn from Wal-Mart it maybe went to Benton AR or whatever distribution location before coming to CT. Or maybe I got a case of them on Amazon that went to wherever their warehouse is before it gets shipped to me by whatever circuitous route UPS takes. Or whatever distribution chain my local grocery store chain has... Which obviously could be different depending on which local chain grocery I shopped at that day. Well, shit, my can of corn could've travelled from MT to TX to NC to CT, through 20 different states before it got to where I bought it. Or it could have travelled straight across from MT to CT (10 states? Not counting right now, but far shorter). How does your labelling account for that?o

It's not quite as easy as labelling for ingredients or nutritional content, which is reasonably easy to provide on an estimated per can basis, on one label I can print for every can in the entire country.

And that's not even counting "global shipping" if they're exported.

[Montegriffo]

Does anyone still think cigarettes are good for you like the adverts told us back in the 50s? After all it is the government that makes them put warnings on the packet.
Surely it's just some government plot to deprive us of choice.
I mean, we can still buy cigarettes if we choose to ignore the information printed on them.
As I understand it, it is going to be a traffic light system. No precise numbers just a guide to which are the best and worst products for the environment and animal welfare.
Are you running scared of being informed because you might find out just how bad that cheeseburger is and be made to choose between a snack and your children's future?
I'm still not understanding why you need to stay uninformed.

Try and at least understand why someone might be skeptical of this, aside from a simplistic: "Oh, you just want to stay uninformed!" strawman.

Let's take your tobacco example: If you had reason to trust that your government was in bed with the tobacco industry and, while they did require the industry to label their products, they allowed the tobacco industry to vastly downplay or manipulate the facts of tobacco smoking, how much more "informed" are consumers?

Or, let's use an even less insiduous, less conspiratorial what-if: What if your government agencies were simply not very competent, not very reliable, and the tobacco industry much better at outsmarting government than vice versa, thereby again resulting in that the tobacco industry got to downplay or manipulate consumers? Are consumers getting more informed now?

All governments of the world are not the same. They're not all as efficient, not all as trustworthy, not all equally corrupt. Deserved or not, Americans do not trust their government. Try thinking of the discussion less as: "Oh, you just don't want to be informed" and more of a "Oh. you don't trust your government to accurately inform you". Could be a better starting point for a discussion.

Point taken but I am desperately trying to understand the position.
''Government bad'' seems like the go-to position far too often, especially on environmental/health issues.
It was the government, after all, which informed us of the BSE crisis and they even placed all sorts of restrictions on the movement and sale of cattle. Who here argued for the right to stay uninformed then so they could make up their own minds?
Is the argument really coming from the belief that CO2 emissions don't affect climate change and since it is scientists and government spreading that propaganda then this is just an extension of that?