Campaigns to require special labels for foods made with genetically-engineered crops have been sporadic and unsuccessful in the past, but the issue may have reached a critical mass following a ballot initiative in California.
Previous state-level attempts to label GE foods -- most recently in Vermont and Connecticut -- have cropped up and died in short succession. Some on both sides of the California initiative say that state's economic and agricultural influence could force federal agencies to create national labeling standards this time around.
The California initiative, supported by nearly a million signatures, will be placed on the state ballot for the November election. If passed it would require that, from July 1, 2014, on, all food sold in California that is either wholly or partially produced with genetic engineering must be labeled as such.
A second provision would forbid any processed foods -- defined as "canning, smoking, pressing, cooking, freezing, dehydration, fermentation or milling" -- with ingredients from biotech crops from being labeled "natural."
The campaign for the initiative, which calls itself "California Right to Know," says labeling ingredients derived from GE crops represents a fundamental right for consumers to know what they are eating, a right which some polls show up to 90% of consumers support. The initiative is backed by a long list of consumer groups, environmental advocates, organic producers and state businesses.
Opponents, mainly agricultural groups, biotech companies and food manufacturers, say the labeling initiative is a costly, naive measure that fails to take into account how food is produced, processed, and manufactured and gives the impression that biotech products are unsafe.
The campaign against the initiative, Coalition Against the Costly Food Labeling Proposition, is raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight the ballot initiative with a voter education campaign. Already the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Council for Biotechnology Information have contributed a combined $750,000 to the coalition, which has spent more than a quarter of a million dollars on campaign consultants and polls and survey research.
The U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance, which represents a number of producer and commodity groups, wouldn't comment on the labeling initiative. The alliance is hosting its second annual Food Dialogues in California on June 21 and 22. A panel discussion during that event, entitled "The Great Debate: Science, Technology, and Food," will address "the role science and technology play in agriculture," on Thursday, June 21. See the Food Dialogues schedule here: http://goo.gl/….
USDA's Economic Research Service reported that by 2011, only up to 6% of soybean acres and 12% of corn acres were planted with non-GE varieties. While California doesn't produce much corn and soybeans, corn products and soybean oil are in myriad products within the state. The number of products that would be labeled, considering the small percentage of U.S. corn and soybeans that are non-GE, could be extensive.
The initiative is limited to California, but as the largest agricultural state in the country and the producer of nearly half of U.S.-grown fruits, nuts and vegetables, its implementation of this legislation would almost certainly have national reverberations.
The California Farm Bureau Federation opposes the initiative. The group's director of environmental affairs, Cynthia Cory, told DTN that if the ballot measure passes, it probably will be challenged in a federal court. "This is something that needs to happen at a federal level," she said.
Supporters of the initiative claim the labeling requirement is simple and cost-free. That has been strenuously disputed by opponents.
Gary Ruskin, campaign manager for the California Right to Know campaign, told DTN that food manufacturers only have to change their labels, thus incurring no costs outside their normal expenses. Manufacturers using non-biotech ingredients, he said, won't have to change anything.
Dr. Stuart Smyth, a researcher at the University of Saskatchewan who specializes in agricultural biotechnology issues, disagreed. "I think there's a massive disconnect between the organizers of this ballot and how large-scale production agriculture works," he told DTN.
In order to accurately label biotech ingredients or to exempt non-biotech ingredients, Smyth said, an identity preservation system must be enacted at all levels of production, from the farmer and his seeds to the manufacturer. Such a system could involve record keeping, sample testing, and segregation of fields and crops for farmers, and a system for processors to create and maintain separate facilities for biotech and non-biotech ingredients.
Smyth referenced a study he conducted in 2001, which computed significantly increased production and operations costs for a Canadian grain company in the mid-1990s, during the one year it segregated GE from non-GE canola in order to ship non-GE canola to Japan.
A study on the costs of biotech food labeling conducted by USDA's Economic Research Service in 2001 concluded that proving food products are not genetically engineered would involve "costs of keeping non-biotech commodities and food products free of biotech material" and that "another set of costs arises in convincing manufacturers and consumers that the product is truly non-biotech."
"Without a doubt, there will be a cost with the proposition," Smyth concluded. However, Ben Lilliston, vice president of programs for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, said he believes that potential costs will be mitigated by a provision in the initiative which differentiates between "knowing and intentional" and accidental comingling of biotech and non-biotech ingredients. View the initiative here:http://goo.gl/….
The California Farmers Union supports the initiative and Executive Director Lynne McBride said costs are just part of the process and initial estimates may be inflated. "When you do anything different, cost is always a factor, but it's important for consumers to have this kind of information," she told DTN.
Costs aside, proponents of the initiative argue that this measure is in line with a growing demand among consumers for transparency in the food industry which should not be ignored. When explaining to DTN why his institute is supporting the initiative, Lilliston stressed consumer support, as shown by several polls such as this one conducted by Reuters in 2010: http://goo.gl/….
"The market needs to adapt," he said. "Right now essentially what they're doing is not listening to what consumers want and trying to keep information from consumers. For a market to function, there's got to be full information."
Opponents such as Smyth and Cory question the accuracy of such polls; they argue that the phrasing of the question on these polls does not inform responders of the costs and implications of labeling.
Lilliston also voiced another popular concern among pro-labeling advocates about the safety of eating genetically engineered organisms. "We've long been critical of the regulatory system here in the U.S.," he said, which he says is inadequate to ensure that environmental or health risks potentially present in biotech products are properly monitored.
The FDA has said GE products are safe and no material differences distinguish them from non-GE products, and no health problems have ever been officially linked to GE ingredients. Most recently, on June 21, the American Medical Association recommended this policy at their annual House of Delegates conference: "Our AMA believes that as of June 2012, there is no scientific justification for special labeling of bioengineered foods, as a class, and that voluntary labeling is without value unless it is accompanied by focused consumer education." The association also asked for continued monitoring and research of health and environmental risks, and called for mandatory pre-market systematic safety assessments of bioengineered food."
Yet the recent notoriety of issues such as the rise of herbicide-resistant weeds and the introduction of controversial GE crops such as alfalfa have people revisiting the potential risks of genetically engineered products, Lilliston said.
Should the labeling effort became a nationwide issue, there is some question of whether a significant portion of the agricultural sector would actually benefit from it right away. According to Catherine Greene, an agricultural economist for USDA's Economic Research Service, demand for non-GE grain has been increasing. Arguably, if consumers are put off by GE labels, farmers using non-GE seed could benefit. Some polls show that up to two-thirds of consumers would be less likely to buy GE foods after labeling.
However, companies that buy non-GE grain are offering prices for the 2012 crop that are substantially higher than the 2010 and 2011 contracts. "Demand isn't being met," Greene told DTN, which she sees as evidence that very few farmers that plant non-biotech varieties have an identity preservation system in place to produce, track, and market their product as non-GE. "It is highly unlikely that all the non-genetically modified acres are being sold as identity-preserved non-GMO crop," Greene said.
While Greene wouldn't comment on the ballot initiative, her research indicates that many farmers who aren't using biotech crops are not set up to exempt themselves from GE labeling, meaning very few producers could actually benefit from the initiative initially.
The GE labeling effort has reached Congress by way of a farm bill amendment proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. The amendment would allow states to require that any food or beverage containing GE ingredients be clearly labeled, essentially pre-empting any attempts to rule the proposed California initiative illegal. The Senate may vote on the Sanders amendment as early as this week.
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