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gmo labeling
Food Advocates Race to Stop Destructive GMO Labeling "Compromise"
'I am going to everything I can to defeat this legislation,' says Bernie Sanders
Jun 24, 2016
The "compromise" food-labeling bill announced Thursday by leaders of the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee is nothing less than a "rollback of democracy at the behest of the world's largest agribusiness and biotech corporations," said Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter.
The legislation in question would create the first mandatory, nationwide labeling standard for food products containing genetically modified organisms that are commonly referred to as GMOs.
Unlike Vermont's GMO-labeling law, which would require items to be clearly marked "produced with genetic engineering," the compromise bill would allow food companies to use a text label, a symbol, or electronic "QR codes" accessed by smartphone--a system "that will send shoppers on a wild scavenger hunt to figure out what GMOs might be in their food," wrote Jo Miles of Food & Water Watch on Friday.
It would supersede Vermont's law and prohibit states from setting their own labeling requirements; exempt foods that have meat, poultry, and egg products as main ingredients; and include no federal penalties for violating the labeling requirements.
While the Senate in March rejected a similarly controversial bill known colloquially as the Deny Americans the Right to Know (DARK) Act, GMO-labeling proponents say the legislation proposed Thursday is just more of the same.
The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) was just one of several groups to issue a blistering response to the news.
"The anti-consumer bill unveiled by [Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.] and [Pat Roberts, R-Kansas], bought and paid for by Big Food corporations, nullifies Vermont's mandatory GMO labeling law, and replaces it with a law that replaces the requirement for clear, on package labels, with a convoluted, inconvenient and discriminatory scheme involving barcodes and 1-800 numbers," said Ronnie Cummins, international director of OCA.
"This is not a labeling bill; it is a non-labeling bill," added Center for Food Safety executive director Andrew Kimbrell. "This kind of labeling system is inadequate and inherently discriminatory against one-third of Americans who do not own smartphones, and even more so against rural, low-income, and elderly populations or those without access to the internet."
Polls have shown that an overwhelming majority of Americans think GMO foods should be labeled accordingly.
According to the Associated Press, Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) office "said he will place a hold on the legislation, which will require at least 60 votes in the 100-member body to overcome."
Sanders said in a statement: "I am very proud that Vermont has led the country in GMO labeling. This bill would preempt what Vermont and other states have done. GMO labeling exists in dozens of countries around the world. It is not controversial. Already major food companies in our country have begun labeling their products. People have a right to know what is in the food they eat. I am going to do everything I can to defeat this legislation."
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The United States of Monsanto?
Why is it that so many politicians are all about letting states make decisions on controversial issues—until some states want to do something that Big Food companies oppose?
Mar 11, 2016
This week thousands of Americans took time out of their busy days to call their Senators to demand that they vote against the DARK Act, a bill sponsored by Kansas Senator Pat Roberts, which would prevent consumers from knowing if the food they eat and feed their families contains genetically engineered (GMO) ingredients. Their support for GMO labeling was echoed by more than 600 organizations, including farming and fishing groups and food companies, representing tens of millions of members and customers who this week also urged the Senate to reject this troubling bill.
GMO crops are created by transferring genetic material from one organism into another to create specific traits, such as resistance to treatment with herbicides, or to make a plant produce its own pesticide to repel insects. Unlike traditional plant and animal breeding, which tries to develop better varieties by selecting traits from the same species, genetic engineering techniques can insert specific genes from any plant, animal or microorganism into the DNA of a different species.
The DARK Act passed out of committee last week by a 14-6 vote and is expected to hit the Senate floor any day now. The House already passed a similar bill in July. If passed in the Senate, it will block state laws that require labeling of GMOs, instruct the USDA to implement a voluntary labeling program and kick off a USDA propaganda program to sell the public on GMOs.
But an overwhelming majority of Americans--over 90 percent in many polls--support GMO labeling. Three states-- Vermont, Connecticut and Maine--have passed laws to that effect. Now, some in the Senate want to thwart these efforts. Why is it that so many politicians are all about letting states make decisions on controversial issues--until some states want to do something that Big Food companies oppose?
As with most battles brewing inside the Beltway, the answer can be found at the end of a paper trail--a green paper trail. Monsanto, a leading manufacturer of GMO seeds (and the herbicides used with them) has spent millions of dollars over the past several years to block GMO labeling efforts, most notably state and local ballot initiatives in California, Colorado, Hawaii and Oregon that failed.
Follow the Money
Since 1999, the fifty largest agricultural and food patent-holding companies and two of the largest biotech and agrochemical trade associations have spent more than US $572 million in campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures, much of it to create a favorable political context to allow GMOs to proliferate. The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), which represents food companies like Kraft and PepsiCo, has spent millions of dollars lobbying in favor of the DARK Act too. Washington's Attorney General recently accused the GMA of maintaining an "egregious" plot to conceal the identity of the corporate donors behind its $11 million campaign to defeat that state's 2013 food-labeling initiative.
What's happening here is painfully obvious. The public is rejecting GMOs, a dubious technology upon which Big Food has built its empire, and now it's pulling out all the stops to protect its market shares and its profit margins.
The public is rightfully suspicious of GMOs. We simply don't know enough about their long-term effects, so it's logical that consumers would want to know whether or not they are eating them. Support for GMO labeling is so strong in fact that Campbell's recently announced it would label GMOs in its products, and even withdrew its support for anti-labeling efforts. But we can't rely on individual corporations to decide these matters for us.
And "voluntary" labeling is not the answer, either, since it effectively upholds the status quo and translates to very little, if any, labeling at all. While there is talk of amending the DARK Act to include an amendment to encourage voluntary labeling, it's crucial to note that this so-called "compromise" will do little to help consumers know if the food they're eating contains GMOs. This clearly won't do.
Reclaiming Democracy
Industry's attempt to block GMO labeling laws is yet another symptom of a democracy hijacked by corporate interests. We the people have elected our leaders to Congress to represent our interests, because we live in a democracy--not a nation controlled by a corporate oligarchy. At least, that's the way it should be. That's why we're urging the Senate to reject the DARK Act and any compromise that results in anything less than on-package labeling that tells consumers if a product contains GMO ingredients.
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Big Industry's All Out Assault on Democracy and Your Right to Know
How an agrichemical industry mouthpiece is trying to undermine GMO labeling with bogus legal analysis
Oct 01, 2015
In an op-ed published by Forbes last week, a pro-biotechnology mouthpiece who used to work for the tobacco industry wrote a provocative piece arguing that a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision imperiled the constitutionality of mandatory genetically engineered food labeling. The claim is flat out wrong and shows no understanding of constitutional law or the issue of labeling of genetically engineered foods. Before rebutting it, some context is helpful.
Genetically Engineered Foods
Right now Americans in every state are working to secure labeling for genetically engineered (GE) foods, which have been subject to significant controversy since their introduction in 1996. Polls regularly show that over 90% of Americans support their mandatory labeling. Unfortunately, unlike sixty-four countries across the globe--including all of the Europe Union, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, Russia, China, and many others--the United States has so far declined to require labeling for genetically engineered foods, leaving the public in the dark about whether the foods we buy are transgenic.
"People are recognizing that genetically engineered crops are a key cog of inherently unsustainable industrial agriculture, and cause significant adverse environmental impacts."
What is driving this nationwide outcry for labeling? Consumers are becoming more aware that while few whole foods are genetically engineered, a substantial majority of processed foods are now produced with genetic engineering. The public recognizes that having thousands of processed foods produced with genetic engineering, yet unlabeled, is deceptive, or at best confusing, to consumers.
Further, Americans are increasingly aware of the risks and negative impacts of genetically engineered crops, correctly seeing through several decades of myths that were carefully constructed by agrochemical companies to promote their products. On the human health side, the public is realizing that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not actually test the food safety of engineered foods or "approve" them; rather, it has confidential meetings with industry in which it merely reviews the industry's own testing--and even that is voluntary. Americans are also realizing that no long-term or epidemiological studies in the United States have examined the safety of human consumption of genetically engineered foods, and that without labeling, there is no accountability or traceability to link such foods to proliferating public health problems.
On the environmental side, people are recognizing that genetically engineered crops are a key cog of inherently unsustainable industrial agriculture, and cause significant adverse environmental impacts. Genetically engineered crops are essentially a pesticide-promoting technology: They are overwhelmingly engineered to be resistant to pesticides or produce pesticides, and consequently have dramatically increased overall pesticide output into our environment. Monsanto's Roundup Ready varieties, resistant to glyphosate, have made glyphosate the most used pesticide in history, with over 280 million pounds applied in U.S. agriculture in 2012 alone. Earlier this year, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded that glyphosate is probably carcinogenic to humans.
On the agricultural side, transgenic contamination of traditional crops from engineered crops has caused U.S. farmers billions of dollars in market losses. And the widespread adoption of crops engineered for pesticide resistance has proliferated an epidemic of resistant "superweeds" now covering more than 60 million acres of U.S. farmland.
Juxtaposed against these risks and impacts, the U.S. public is discovering that industry's hype is false. Namely, despite billions of dollars in research and nearly two decades of commercialization, there are no crops that are engineered to increase crop yields, reduce world hunger, or mitigate global warming; instead, the agrochemical companies that engineer crops have largely succeeded in making these crops resistant to their own products--pesticides. Nor is there any "consensus" that such foods are safe.
Labeling GE Foods
For these reasons, into the federal breach, state-required labeling efforts have proliferated, in the venerable "states-as-laboratories" tradition of American federalism. Overall over 30 states in 2014-2015 introduced labeling bills. Connecticut and Maine passed labeling laws in 2013, albeit with clauses tying their effective dates to similar laws in other states, and in May 2014, Vermont became the first state to pass a stand-alone labeling law, which goes into effect in July 2016. And despite spending over $100 million dollars, crushing election spending records, biotech industry has also barely beaten back three state ballot initiatives, in California (2012), Washington (2013), and Oregon (2014), by increasingly narrow 51%-49% margins (Oregon lost by 812 votes, total).
Industry's All Out Assault on Democracy and Your Right to Know
Industry immediately challenged the Vermont GE labeling law, Act 120, seeking an injunction stopping its implementation, but after a year of litigation, in May of this year the Federal District Court for the District of Vermont resoundingly rejected their arguments, upholding the law. The Court agreed with what many labeling supporters have argued for years, concluding that state labeling was not preempted by federal law, that it did not impermissibly interfere with interstate commerce, and that food manufacturers did not have any First Amendment right to keep consumers in the dark about whether their food is genetically engineered. The Court found the reasons Vermont gave for the mandated disclosure labeling--those described above, promoting public health and environment protection, and preventing consumer confusion and deception--were substantial state interests to support requiring labeling. Industry appealed, with briefing over this summer and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals set to hear argument on October 8 in New York City.
Meanwhile, the chemical industry and "Big Food" have continued to pour millions into their assault on States' Rights and the People's Right to Know in Washington, DC, making their top priority legislation that would prohibit all state labeling (and any oversight of genetically engineered crop production), known as the "Denying Americans The Right to Know" or DARK Act. It passed the House of Representatives in July, and is headed for a Senate showdown this fall.
And the industry's onslaught has been in the media too: following the tobacco industry playbook, Big Food and agrochemical companies deliberately mislead the public on the facts about genetically engineered crops by spending hundreds of millions of dollars, creating front groups, and paying for the help of neutral-appearing academics. Among other scare-tactics is the claim that labeling will increase food prices, which has now been debunked by independent studies by Consumer Reports.
Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Commercial Speech and GE Labeling
The decisionReed v. Town of Gilbert, Arizona described in the Forbes article received little media attention. Like many towns, the town of Gilbert, Arizona had passed a code prohibiting the display of outdoor signs without a permit, while exempting several sign categories. Applying the code, the town cited a local church for posting signs about the time and place of their weekly service, but based on the code's exceptions, other types of signs, such as election signs, were not similarly ticketed. The church successfully challenged the ordinance as violating of their 1st Amendment Freedom of Speech rights. Reversing the lower court decision, Justice Thomas's opinion striking down the ordinance explained that the town's sign code was a "content-based" speech restriction, and thus subject to the highest level of 1st Amendment judicial scrutiny, strict scrutiny, which it failed
The level of judicial scrutiny, or how closely the court will examine a law, is often the critical question in in free speech cases. Strict scrutiny requires a government to show that its restriction on speech furthers a compelling governmental interest, and is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. Gilbert offered the aesthetic appeal of curbsides and traffic safety for interests. The court found these interests too insufficient and too under inclusive in their application in the sign code to survive strict scrutiny. Justices Breyer, Ginsberg, and Kagan concurred only in the judgement and wrote separately, explaining that while Gilbert's sign law would fail under any test (noting that "does not pass strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, or even the laugh test"), they disagreed with Justice Thomas's broad language of when and how strict scrutiny was the appropriate standard.
With even a cursory understanding of these facts, attempts to apply this case to the GE labeling context quickly fall apart. The first thing to understand-- that is not present in Reed, nor ever mentioned in the Forbes piece--is that commercial speech, like consumer product labeling, is fundamentally different than other forms of traditionally protected speech, like political or religious speech. Commercial speech is a lesser form of speech, generally entitled to less protection; in fact, until 1978, commercial speech was not protected under the First Amendment at all. The Supreme Court has subsequently explained that the "extension of First Amendment protection to commercial speech is justified principally by the value to consumers of the information such speech provides," not any inherent constitutional rights of manufacturers. As a consequence, laws regarding commercial speech do not receive strict scrutiny review, instead courts apply lesser burdens on governments in such circumstances.
Indeed, the crux of Vermont's GE labeling litigation has been whether an intermediate form of scrutiny should apply instead of rational basis review, not whether strict scrutiny should apply. The district court in the GE labeling litigation held that the lowest level of judicial review, rational basis review, was the proper standard for laws requiring the labeling of genetically engineered foods. Tellingly, industry has not even argued that content-based review or strict scrutiny should apply to the Court of Appeals.
The second major doctrinal point is the difference between a speech prohibition, like the sign postings in Reed, and a speech disclosure, like product labeling. This is also entirely absent from the Forbes piece. In speech doctrine there are material differences between disclosure requirements and prohibitions, with prohibitions having more 1st Amendment protection, for obvious reasons: any interests affected by a disclosure are substantially weaker than those suppressed, particularly in the commercial speech context, where the whole point of the constitutional protection is the value to consumers that speech provides. Thus a company's interests in "not providing any particular factual information" are merely "minimal." Balanced against that are the many substantial reasons in favor of labeling discussed above--health, environment, and preventing consumer deception and confusion--all of which courts have long held to be substantial governmental interests for purposes of mandated product disclosures.
In short, it is difficult to imagine that forty years of commercial speech precedent would be implicitly overturned by a non-commercial speech case, without the Court even mentioning the sea-change it was making. There is not a single case in which a court has found a commercial disclosure, like a product label, to be "content based" and thus subject to strict scrutiny. Based on the position presented by the Forbes piece, all kinds of commercial product labeling requirements would be potentially be struck down, because all factual disclosure requirements require specific content. However, that doesn't mean they are "content-based" for purposes of strict scrutiny, and Reed does not say otherwise. It is extremely unlikely that the Supreme Court would hide such an elephant in such a mouse hole.
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