FDA to use 3 million for consumer outreach regarding agricultural biotechnology

It was announced that the FDA would get about 3 million dollars to help counter some of the mis-information around the topic of biotechnology.

Here is a quote from the Washington Post describing the allocation of $3 million dollars:  

"The deal to avert a government shutdown, which passed the Senate by a vote of 79 to 18 Thursday, allocates $3 million to “consumer outreach and education regarding agricultural biotechnology,” which includes genetic engineering of food and commodity crops. The money is to be used to tout “the environmental, nutritional, food safety, economic, and humanitarian impacts” of biotech crops and their derivative food products."

It is unclear exactly what this program will look like or when it will be rolled out, but since it has been announced there has been a lot of chatter from supporters and opposition alike.  The opposition of the outreach initiative wonder why the government is doing the teaching instead of the regulating.  

I on the other hand am a big fan of such an initiative.  I have posted many blog entries citing scientific references on the safety of GMOs.  However the anti-GMO groups have put so much mis-information out there that it is easy to get confused on what is fact and what is fiction.   While I do believe that the industry needs to do its part in education, I believe there is nothing wrong with the government educating as well.  In fact our agencies already have some great programs to educate people on all sorts of topics.  Why should we get upset about them trying to counter mis-information on GMOs?  

The Washington Post already has 292 comments on the article about the FDA outreach program.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/05/03/the-government-is-going-to-try-to-convince-you-to-like-gmo-foods/?utm_term=.8694cdfb2531#comments

Here are some educational programs by the EPA.  I do not see any major outrage at these resources the government is spending to sponsor these educational programs:  https://www.epa.gov/education

The FDA also has plenty of outreach and educational programs already out there.  Just go to their site and take a look.  Here are a just a couple:

And here is even more from the FDA:  https://www.fda.gov/food/resourcesforyou/consumers/ucm239035.htm

I do not think there is any argument that these agencies should not be doing outreach.  Even the EPA  show on their site that education is what increases public awareness and knowledge as opposed to just information that provides facts and opinions.   Education is what separates the facts from the opinions.  

https://www.epa.gov/education/what-environmental-education

The other point is that the wealth of mis-information really does need to be countered.   I picked just a few comments to show there is a good reason to get the facts out there.

Let's try again with the facts:

https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/01/29/pewaaas-study-scientific-consensus-on-gmo-safety-stronger-than-for-global-warming/

Here is another:

???   I don't even know what to say to this one.  I am not sure I could make up something this good.  I surely can't find anything about GMOs killing anybody ever.   I did find one nice snopes.com article about the rumor of the 1st person dying from a GMO tomatoes which of course is FALSE.

http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/gmodeath.asp

In closing, one comment really summed it all up for me.  The question for you to answer is "Which is it?"