In July, Vermont will become the first state to require that food made with GMOs (genetically modified organisms) be labeled. This presents an interesting challenge for food companies, who will either have to segregate and label products headed toward the Green Mountain State, label everything they produce, or just decline to offer their wares to the citizens of Vermont.
The obvious impact on interstate commerce has made the question of product labeling a federal one: State-by-state labeling would be a logistical nightmare for the food industry, in turn increasing costs for consumers. A bill that would override the Vermont mandate and set up a system of voluntary labeling made it through the House, but failed, last week, to pass the Senate.
One of the sticking points is just how much labeling will increase costs. The label lobby commissioned a study that purportedly proves beyond a shadow of econometric doubt that labeling will cost the average family less than $10 a year. More plausible is the estimate by a Cornell University economist suggesting food costs could go up some $500 per family.
Part of that higher estimate comes from the cost when consumers choose pricey organic food. Much of the funding for the pro-labeling campaign comes from the organic food industry, which expects GMO labels to frighten shoppers into purchasing more of their products. Organics being generally more expensive than the conventional alternatives, consumers switching to organics may spend hundreds of dollars more per year.
Even if consumers shrug off Vermont-style labels, there will be costs. Most GMOs people consume come from corn and soybeans of the sort I grow on my farm in Missouri. Nationwide, well over 90 percent of each crop is genetically modified. They are handled in bulk. We combine the grain, dump it in a truck, and take it to one of those huge grain silos you see when you travel across the Midwest. If farmers have to segregate GMO from non-GMO crops, the infrastructure in those facilities will have to be multiplied. And there are other costs: Every time we move from a GMO crop to a non-GMO crop, we’ll have to carefully clean all the machinery so there’s no cross-contamination.
Proponents of labeling are adamant that consumers have the right to know what is in their foods. Consumers have demonstrated that preference in dozens of public surveys, some of which show over 90 percent approval of GMO labeling. On the other hand, a recent survey conducted by agricultural economist Jayson Lusk suggests that 80 percent of consumers are also in favor of labeling foods containing DNA.
The consumer no doubt wants to know lots of things. She might want to know what I’m wearing when I drive my combine through the field. She might want to know my political views, what my farm pays our employees, and whether the corn or soybeans are harvested in the morning or the afternoon. The time of day a crop is harvested actually does affect its nutritional value — indeed, it makes a bigger difference than whether the crop was produced from genetically modified seeds. As every reputable scientific and regulatory agency looking at the question has found, there is no difference in food safety or nutritional value between conventional and genetically modified foodstuffs.
But what of such facts when there are celebrities to be heard from? Gwyneth Paltrow called for GMO labeling at a committee hearing on Capitol Hill last summer. It was a moment that defied parody: a movie star playing the part of a concerned mother doing performance art about a subject in which her knowledge base is approximately zero “testifying” in front of a panel of solons not well known for their scientific and agricultural expertise.
But what do you expect when even major food manufacturers are starting to play to the fear of GMOs? The Hershey Company announced last year they will be moving away from using sugar from genetically modified sugar beets. There is no chemical difference between sugar from GMO sugar beets and sugar from non-GMO sugar cane. You can’t tell the difference between the two with any test. There is no genetically modified material in sugar of any kind — the proteins where the genetic material resides are removed during processing. The only way to know the origin of the sugar is to track it from the field to the candy bar.
Still, it’s a nice diversionary tactic: In a nation suffering from obesity and diabetes, a company selling sugar-laden candies brands itself responsible by refusing to use perfectly safe sugar made from perfectly safe plants bred by a perfectly safe technology.
There is another wrinkle in the labeling controversy. As Nathanael Johnson writes in the webzine Grist, it’s not clear what counts as genetically modified food. For example, if genetic modification means that genes from one species have been moved to another, then wouldn’t fruit from grafted trees have to be labeled as GMO? And what about ruby red grapefruit? The product of mutagenesis (the exposure of seeds to radiation to cause mutations), ruby red grapefruit is not, by the typical definition, genetically modified. Hence the fruit’s eligibility for the organic market. But if consumers have a right to know about genes that have been moved, shouldn’t they know about genes that are changed by radiation? Johnson mentions several other breeding techniques that might or might not be considered genetic modification.
These are just some of the questions that will have to be addressed by any law dealing with GMO labeling. Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Agriculture Committee, saw his bill overriding state mandates fail on a procedural vote March 16. The Kansas senator’s compromise would have encouraged food companies to make GMO information available either through a website linked to a code on the food package or via a toll-free number. If voluntary compliance was less than 75 percent, Internet-linked “smart labels” would be required in two years. Democrats refused the compromise. One gets the sense they won’t settle for anything less than a skull and crossbones.
We need a solution, and I think I have one. Let’s require labels on any foodstuff that has been changed at any time in the past 10,000 years by human ingenuity. The label would read:
Blake Hurst is a farmer in Missouri.
