In Europe, GMOs are tightly regulated in the food chain. Foods that receive the various prestigious European "Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée"-type markings cannot be made with GMO yeasts, dairy products, plants etc. Foods that do contain greater than 0.9% of approved GMOs must be labelled. A limited number of GM crops have been approved, mainly for animal feed. Even these approvals remain controversial, and there are attempts to regulate gene flow between approved GM crops and non-GM crops by requiring buffer zones.
In the US, the explosion of GMO in the food chain occurred during the Bush II years. The public was deliberately kept in the dark. The Bush administration even issued regulations prohibiting labeling foods as GMO-free. They didn't want Americans asking "what are GMOs?" Americans are supposed to eat what their corporate rulers put on their plates and be grateful for it.
As a result, while in Europe there was extensive public debate and research about GM foods, in the US there has been almost no public debate. The corporate and Republican intention was to make GMO foods a fait accompli in the US, then use American political power to force them down European throats.
Trade wars are nothing new, and there is a very active trade war between the US and the EU over GMOs.
For the most part the debate has formed along the same lines as every other debate about environment or health -- nuclear power, pesticides, tobacco, climate change and big oil, etc. The familiar paid spokesmen for these familiar industries get up and tell us that everything is safe, and that only Luddites and pseudoscientists worry about DDT or tobacco or Strontium or CO2 or GMOs. Everyone who disagrees with them is an ignoramus. The arrogance of the industry spokesmen eventually helps promote acceptance of the side in favor of regulations.
Industries understand this. That is why they want to pull off the GMO takeover by stealth, without public debate. They could not do this in Europe, where food has quasi-religious significance. But in America? You betcha you can make Americans eat GMOs without telling them. That's Freedom.
But behind all the noise, there are large economic forces at work. In the case of the trade war over GMOs between the US and the EU, the economic issue is not simply about human health, it is about protecting European agricultural industry from US/Monsanto economic hegemony.
While there are GM crops designed for pest resistance, by far the largest profits for Monsanto come not directly from GM crops but from the sale of glyphosate herbicides. Roundup is the best-known brand name, but there are others. A GM modification conferring resistance to glyphosates -- the "Roundup-Ready" genetic modification -- makes it possible to nuke agricultural areas with massive amounts of gyphosates, leaving only the "Roundup-Ready" crops standing in the aftermath. And that means increased sales of glyphosates, which are a major cash cow.
American agriculture is based on the intensive use of massive amounts of chemical additives. It is an adjunct of the oil industry and the chemical industry. European agriculture, which developed over thousands of years, is much more hands-on, labor intensive, and it produces exquisite products of which the Europeans are justly proud. They eat the best food in the world, and they know it. They don't want it turned into tasteless American crap just so that Monsanto and other American corporations can get richer.
GMOs make a very good line in the sand for keeping out the US corporate hegemony.
In the US, those of us who wish that US agriculture were more like European agriculture -- or have even more ambitious dreams of biodynamic foodways -- are currently fighting for GMO labeling, simply to increase public awareness. The usual battle lines are forming,
with industry shills (and their unpaid useful idiots, who abound) screaming about pseudoscience, and the greenies pushing for our right to know what is in our food.
But bear in mind that, as in Europe, this is not really a battle about a particular technology. GM technology is used to make things like human insulin, and there is no constituency to make diabetics go back to using bovine insulin. GM techniques are central to the modern biomedical industry, and will remain so.
No, this is about power, not about technology. The question is whether Monsanto and similar megacorporations should have the power they do over our lives, and whether we, or they, will control our foodways.
The Europeans are fighting to retain control of their foodways. Will we Americans fight to take back control of ours?