I've been watching people debate labeling, and I've come to the conclusion that, to calm all the fears and doubts that have been expressed, something like the following would need to be implemented.
Remember the last time you got prescription medication? Remember the thin sheet of paper, folded about 5 times, with both front and back printed in 6 point type? The one that listed all the chemical information, all the drug interactions, all the potential problems known to occur as side effects?
Multiply it by - I dunno, but a large number. Include one with not only every package of processed food, but every fruit and vegetable, every cut of meat, fish, and poultry, that you buy from any retail outlet.
Require that any animal raised for food be microchipped, and that information on that chip include comprehensive information on all products the animal has come into contact with during its life prior to processing for food. For fish, include the latitude and longitude at which the fish was caught, and, preferably, full chemical and radiological analysis of the water from which it was caught, and information that shows what areas it might have migrated through before the catch. The chips would be processed when the animals were.
Unprocessed fruits and vegetables would need to be coded for varietal, hybridization history, and both fertilization information and types of pesticide and herbicide which came into contact with both the final product and the plants which ultimately produced it.
Processed items, which might originally come from multiple sources, would need to include information on each source. Separately.
Potential allergens for each component of any ingredient would need to be identified, as well as side effects, both as individual items and in combination, that might be noted in an individual who consumed the specific product.
To save paper, each item might be tagged with an identifier, and an app developed which can read the identifiers and bring up the 50-200 page .pdf file for each item, but printouts would need to be available on request.
And we still haven't gotten to GMO identification, which, to be truly adequate, would have to include full information on the genetic codes existing in any given product. After all, some genetic modification takes place naturally, and you never know when the apple you're biting into might be an unwitting mutant.
I'm sorry if this sounds facetious, or snarky - it isn't. What you eat can, in fact, kill you, for a variety of different reasons. And you can have no side effects at all, and watch the person next to you keel over, for instance, from deep anaphylactic shock from the same foods.
But what seems to be the desire here is for there to be no risk at all, or at least no unknown risk, attached to the consumption of any product presumed to be edible. For anybody. And that is too much to ask, either of medical science, or your friendly local grocer or farmer, or even Monsanto, corporate monster that it may be.