I think you're right, but that's two issues getting mixed together (as they tend to do): let's call it 'food morality' (meat-is-murder, or even your carrot juice example), and 'food sanctity' (no-GMO, no-frankenfood, and/or no-fab-food). My earlier point was only that these *can* be separate from other cultural rules about 'people' (no-clones, no-augmentation, no-uplifts), and from other rules about technology (no-advanced-nano, no-thinking-machines, no-nukes, whatever). You can definitely believe in the sanctity of people but not of food, or the reverse, or both, or neither. :) That said, I'm not claiming that's how the Jovians think. I think they're sort of the 'bad guys', so it's easy to assume they're negative on 'food morality', but high on 'food sanctity'… a sort of 'back to nature' conservatism?

Do hydroponically grown plants really take up that much room? Why couldn't they grow room after room full of water and plants? The water could be easily recycled again and again so I don't think to much of it would be lost in the process.

root@Bioconservative view of food [hr] In addition to the rhetorical desire for pure food, the Jovian Republics memetic engineers can work to inculcate a consistent set of eating rituals in the culture as a whole and make it a powerful reminder of the stark differences between humans and transhumans. Jovian citizens eat three meals a day, and if they work to make one of those meals a "family meal", this is a daily reinforcement of what makes a Jovian a Jovian. This becomes a trope so embedded in Jovian culture that entertainment media would only have to show a few frames of a completely normal looking humanoid with different eating habits to clearly indicate to the audience that this character is other, and should be considered as such. The beauty of developing such a memetic hook is that the memetic engineers can come at it from a completely innocuous direction like nutrition and family values. The fact that it can be used to manipulate culture is a byproduct beneficial to the memetic engineers, and we have already seen evidence of this working. In fact this sort of "engineering of consent" was the birth of Public Relations. Bacon and eggs are still considered a "normal" American breakfast, courtesy of Edward Bernays, a charismatic nephew of the infamous Sigmund Freud.

The Junta has no problem with genetically modified food. They are bioconservatives, yes, but they're 22nd century bioconservatives. Just like I'm sure there were once people who took issue with orange carrots, and then GMOs, in EP the issue is with nanotechnology and hugely modified biologies. I assume the Republic uses food production just like people talk about producing food now in space stations. Modified plants and algae in hydroponics, mostly.

Also note that bioconservatism, much like conservatism before it, is a political spectrum, not just a singular stance. I imagine that there are multiple political parties within the Junta (at least two), each with differing stances on the whole issue. There likely aren't any full techno-progressivist groups, but there are probably groups within that are more pragmatic than paranoid about technology.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic.