To be suspicious of Lasering on fruit and Veg instead of labels?

[NeoMaxiZoomDweebie]

It's been approved info here andfruit and veg will be hitting the shops with lasered barcodes and brands instead of sticky labels.

It's more environmentally friendly apparently. What I don't like is that the actual fruit has now been altered in a way...it's physical self is not pure any longer. Also, suppliers will now be able to tell where the fruit has been sold.

Why worry about that you say? Well the fact that Monsanto have patents out on a variety of vegetables worries me.

How long before this company is controlling all fruit and vegetables? And saying which countries can sell which fresh produce?

They only need to whack their laser mark on the food they "own" and that's their stamp and their trademark.

I also don't like the look of those lasered apples...you can see the flesh!

I think it's a great idea!

All it does is burn the skin a little - nothing to do with 'altered' which is a barmy concept. We 'alter' food ALL the time. It's called cooking.

Gm issues aside the lasering doesn't bother me.

They only "own" the fruit till their customer "buys" the fruit. The only way they could control where the fruit ended up is by not selling it to those customers but once they sell to tesco then tesco owns that fruit. They can decide not to sell their produce to certain customers now - lasering will not change that.

The only thing that bothers me is potential health issues arising from the dyes as a pp mentioned but would they get approval without these fears being allayed?

The GM issue is that farmers are no longer allowed to use their own seed. That is completely separate to lightly cooking the skin of a piece of fruit/veg to ensure it remains labled all the way through the supply chain.

And I think peppa pig apples are a good idea if it makes children eat more fruit. They will still sell normal ones.

Yes maddening but what if they decide that Tesco has pissed them off so they're no going to sell them any? I know that sounds far fetched but it's already been discussed as a potential political bargaining tool./.....food that is. I for one will be using my allotment for 80% of my fresh food by next year and I advise others to think about the same.

But burning the barcode into the skin doesn't make it any easier to not sell tescos the apples than stickering them. It doesn't have magical properties, its just a different label.

Food is already a political bargaining tool. If it wasn't, half the world wouldn't be starving to death.

It's a laser. Basically coherent light.

How on earth is it going to harm anything?

Well, maybe something with thin skin like an apple won't stay fresh as long, so I guess there's an argument against. But bananas, melon etc you'll throw the lasered bit away.

I don't know mrs Hoarder....they could stick a copyright mark on them!

The could stick a copyright mark on the label!

Really, lots of sound and fury signifying nothing. Again.

Well, the dyes are basically rust. I'm not concerned about that and am reassured by the four-year approval process - some forms of iron hydroxide have unusual chemical properties, and that's what was queried on first application. I eat fruit & veg with spade marks on them; this is similar. We instinctively prefer unmarked fruit & veg, so I'm surprised this has passed whatever consumer testing it's been through.

The GM issue is that farmers are no longer allowed to use their own seed.

I didn't know this, MrsH, can you post a decent link please?

But they can do that now op without the lasering. It is 2 separate issues - the gm issues I wholeheartedly agree with you - it is worrying and scary but I think that your concerns over lasering detract from your concerns over gm.

No issues with lasering whatsoever.

I presume lasering costs more which would raise the price of food.

garlic I couldn't quickly find a recent source I trust, but here's a BBC article.

Thank you, MrsH :) That is a worrying aspect of GM crops, isn't it? Since nature seems to be doing a decent job of cross-pollinating GM plants, though, I suspect it will prove difficult to enforce. Interesting times ahead ... !

I'm not sure that lasering would increase costs. The machinery needed to manufacture hundreds of thousands of small sticky labels can't be cheap. The machinery needed to then detach those labels one at a time from the backing and then stick them securely onto unevenly-shaped fruit can't be cheap either.

love this idea...can't wait for this to hit the shelves.