A Farmer Debunks the GMO Labeling Opposition

Heading up the cam­paign are the same folks who, backed by Big Tobacco, fought anti-smoking ini­tia­tives in California. They are the same peo­ple who, with a lit­tle help from Big Oil, tried to repeal California’s clean energy and cli­mate laws. The $25 mil­lion that has so far poured into the “No on 37” cam­paign comes from huge biotech, chem­i­cal and food pro­cess­ing cor­po­ra­tions (Monsanto, DuPont, Dow AgriScience, Pepsi, Coca-Cola). These are all com­pa­nies whose pri­mary moti­va­tion is profit, not the pro­tec­tion of con­sumers or farmers.

Here’s my farmer’s-eye view of the pro­pa­ganda com­ing out of the No on 37 cam­paign, which by the way is dubi­ously named: Stop the Deceptive Food Labeling Scheme.

Propaganda state­ment #1:

The ini­tia­tive would close off oppor­tu­ni­ties for farm­ers and food pro­duc­ers who might want to take advan­tage of future advances in crops bred for dis­ease and pest resis­tance, drought tol­er­ance, improved growth, nutri­tion, taste or other benefits.

This is per­haps the most out­ra­geous of the No on 37 campaign’s pur­ported con­cerns, and it’s directed at us, the farm­ers. The GMO giants claim to be con­cerned that we will not get a chance to grow GMO crops. Really? After suing and harass­ing thou­sands of farm­ers and dri­ving small seed deal­ers out of busi­ness and into court, it is beyond disin­gen­u­ous for Monsanto and the GMO gang to feign con­cern for our inter­ests. I can assure them that we farm­ers are more afraid of Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta than the biotech giants are at the prospect of los­ing their genet­i­cally altered seed.

Farmers in sev­eral states have tried to pass farmer pro­tec­tion laws against the spillage and drift of GMO seed and pollen. These laws were designed to respond to the fact that biotech com­pa­nies can sue farm­ers for patent infringe­ment if GMO crops inad­ver­tently sprout up as “weeds” on their farms—the result of pollen drift or seed spillage from a neigh­bor­ing or nearby farm that grows GMO crops. Most of us farm­ers see this dif­fer­ently. We believe that when GMO seeds spill onto our land, or pollen from GMO crops drifts into our non-GMO crops and con­t­a­m­i­nates them, this con­sti­tutes tres­pass­ing, not patent theft. In spite of this tres­pass, Monsanto alone has brought 136 cases against more than 400 farm­ers. Thousands more U.S. farm­ers have been threat­ened with law­suits by Monsanto.

Farmers grow­ing cot­ton, corn, soy, and canola are in a tight spot because biotech com­pa­nies have bought a major­ity of the seed cor­po­ra­tions in order to con­trol what seed can be grown. In the last sev­eral years, more than 90% of the seed avail­able to farm­ers for these four crops has been genet­i­cally mod­i­fied. So if a farmer wants to grow any of these com­mod­ity crops, he’s forced to grow the GMO vari­ety –or not grow them at all.

Propaganda state­ment #2:

To avoid label­ing a prod­uct as non-GMO will require farm­ers, food proces­sors, and food dis­trib­u­tors to doc­u­ment that ingre­di­ents are not pro­duced through biotechnology.

This mas­sive new paper­work and record keep­ing requirement—on tens of thou­sands of crops and food products—will add sig­nif­i­cant cost and bureau­cracy for farm­ers and food producers.

Exaggeration upon exag­ger­a­tion. The reg­u­la­tion and record-keeping process is not that dif­fi­cult and there are not tens of thou­sands of GE crops grown in California. When our farm first con­verted to organic pro­duc­tion we were leery of the reg­u­la­tions and the require­ments for record-keeping and doc­u­men­ta­tion for organic cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, so we under­stand the trep­i­da­tion farm­ers have over reg­u­la­tions and record-keeping. Now, how­ever, it is a reg­u­lar part of our rou­tine. Our staff reg­u­larly doc­u­ments our grow­ing and sales prac­tices on com­put­ers, which makes it easy to track and seg­re­gate inputs and prod­ucts if necessary.

While the organic reg­u­la­tions are strict, their exis­tence pro­vides the con­sumer and the farm­ers with a guar­an­tee that a third-party inspec­tor is review­ing the farmer’s records and grow­ing and sales prac­tices, and are root­ing out mis­takes or any instances of delib­er­ate cheat­ing. Excellent and easy-to-use record-keeping com­puter pro­grams are avail­able for small, medium, and large farms.  Given our expe­ri­ence, we believe that cre­at­ing an accu­rate paper trail for organic, GMO-free, or nat­u­rally grown prod­ucts should not be seen as daunt­ing by farm­ers or be used as a rea­son to not label GMO prod­ucts. And let’s not forget—in almost 50 other coun­tries, this process is required—and exe­cuted with­out undue bur­den on farmers.

As for the issue of “tens of thou­sands” of GMO crops in California, that’s sim­ply not true. Currently, genet­i­cally engi­neered cot­ton, corn, sugar beets, soy, a bit of canola, and exper­i­men­tal alfalfa are grown com­mer­cially in California. These same crops are the only ones grown on large acreages in the U.S. So there are not thou­sands of GMO crops that are grown any­place in the U.S. or the rest of the world. There are, how­ever, tens of thou­sands of prod­ucts that have genet­i­cally mod­i­fied ingre­di­ents. About 75% of our processed food has GMO ingredients—and processed food accounts for 80% of the food U.S. con­sumers eat. That should give con­sumers pause.

Propaganda state­ment #3:

This pro­vi­sion (Proposition 37) would sig­nif­i­cantly impact farm­ers’ abil­ity to mar­ket their foods as nat­ural, even if there are no GE ingredients. So, for exam­ple, under the mea­sure a raw almond could be mar­keted as “nat­ural” but the same almond that has been salted and canned could not. Apples could be labeled “nat­u­rally grown,” but apple­sauce made from the same apples could not be adver­tised as “nat­ural apple­sauce” sim­ply because the apples were cooked.

If almonds are plunged into a salt bath, no mat­ter how you look at it, it’s not nat­ural. When do almonds ever do that nat­u­rally? When almonds have tamari or salt or gar­lic added they are not nat­ural. When nat­ural apples are made into apple­sauce, they are cooked, and almost all the non-organic apple­sauce pro­duc­ers add preser­v­a­tives. Is this apple­sauce nat­ural? This begs the ques­tion as to what is “natural.”

Since there are no gov­ern­ment or indus­try guide­lines or reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing what is or is not “nat­ural,” food proces­sors have stamped the word “nat­ural” on every­thing from corn flakes to processed meats to sham­poo. Biotech com­pa­nies, cos­metic com­pa­nies, and food proces­sors all want to keep up the illu­sion that processed foods are “nat­ural” and thus safer than non-natural prod­ucts. Why? Because they can charge con­sumers more for any­thing with the word “nat­ural” on it. Sales of “nat­ural” foods have reached about $50 bil­lion a year, com­pared with $32 bil­lion in sales of cer­ti­fied organics.

From a farmer’s or consumer’s per­spec­tive the exis­tence of label­ing require­ments for GMO foods or nat­ural foods is an impor­tant piece of infor­ma­tion that enables farm­ers to decide which seeds to plant—and con­sumers to decide which foods to choose or reject for their families.

Propaganda state­ment #4:

The over­whelm­ing major­ity of sci­en­tists, med­ical experts and the U.S. Food & Drug Administration have all con­cluded that genet­i­cally engi­neered food prod­ucts are safe and that requir­ing spe­cial labels is unnecessary.

The anti-labeling advo­cates repeat­edly make this claim. True, the FDA has said that GMO foods and feed crops are safe. But how would the FDA know? The gov­ern­ment agency charged with pro­tect­ing the health and safety of U.S. cit­i­zens has admit­tedly con­ducted no inde­pen­dent test­ing of any GMO prod­uct. Instead it naively—or per­haps conspiratorially?—accepts the test­ing done by the genetic engi­neer­ing cor­po­ra­tions them­selves. And we know full well that these cor­po­ra­tions are more inter­ested in pro­tect­ing their prof­its than they are in pro­tect­ing our food.

The world-wide sci­en­tific con­sen­sus is that GMOs are not safe which is why more than 40 coun­tries require manda­tory label­ing for GMO prod­ucts and some coun­tries have banned them alto­gether. No long-term or multi­gen­er­a­tional feed­ing stud­ies have been con­ducted on GMO foods or feed grains. GMO prod­ucts have been on the mar­ket for almost twenty years and all we have are a small num­ber of short-term feed­ing stud­ies. Yet even despite their brevity, those stud­ies are alarm­ing. French sci­en­tists review­ing 19 90-day GMO feed­ing stud­ies found that 30.8% of female test ani­mals had liver abnor­mal­i­ties and 43.5% of the males had kid­ney abnor­mal­i­ties. Other tests have found a con­sis­tent thick­en­ing of the intesti­nal wall in a high per­cent­age of test sub­jects. These find­ings are alarm­ing, but GMO feed­ing stud­ies by inde­pen­dent lab­o­ra­to­ries are not con­sid­ered in reg­u­la­tory deci­sions made by the FDA.

Even more recent feed­ing tests sug­gest that sig­nif­i­cant weight gains are another unfor­tu­nate byprod­uct of con­sum­ing GMO food and may be a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in our bal­loon­ing obe­sity epi­demic. If GMO foods make us fat wouldn’t we want to have a label that alerts con­sumers that GMO ingre­di­ents are in the food?

Propaganda state­ment #5:

Requiring farm­ers and food pro­duc­ers to put scary sound­ing labels on their foods will con­fuse and mis­lead consumers.

This is just insult­ing. Consumers rely on labels on the foods they pur­chase to inform them of every­thing from addi­tives to calo­ries to pro­tein and vit­a­min con­tent. But we’re not intel­li­gent enough to under­stand what “this ingre­di­ent was genet­i­cally engi­neered” means? Are the mil­lions of con­sumers in nearly 50 other coun­tries that require label­ing dazed and con­fused? Or per­haps, just bet­ter informed than American con­sumers who are kept in the dark?

GE crops are no friend to farm­ers, con­sumers, or the environment

Biotech cor­po­ra­tions brag that their genet­i­cally altered crops are going to elim­i­nate hunger, reduce pes­ti­cide use, reduce chem­i­cal fer­til­izer use, bet­ter tol­er­ate drought, and increase yields. If they really believe this, why would they think that a genet­i­cally mod­i­fied organ­ism (GMO) label is scary? If they are proud of their suc­cesses, if they believe their prod­ucts are so supe­rior, why be afraid to label them?

Maybe they are not as supe­rior as the biotech indus­try alleges. Genetic engineering’s less-than-superior results have been well-documented—and are well known by respon­si­ble, informed farm­ers all over the world.

The fail­ure of GMO crops has resulted in farm­ers being forced to use the most dan­ger­ous pes­ti­cides and worm insec­ti­cides, and these sub­stances are now show­ing up in preg­nant women and new­born babies. The sec­ond most inserted GMO prod­uct in crops is Bacillus thurin­gen­sis (Bt), a bac­te­ria that attacks worms. This is a related organ­ism to the Bt that organic and chem­i­cal farm­ers have used for years, but it is a genet­i­cally mod­i­fied ver­sion. This GMO ver­sion has already begun to show resis­tance to corn root­worms. It has also shown up in 93% of the fal­lop­ian tubes of preg­nant women.

RoundUp Ultra, the weed killer that is used with RoundUp Ready genet­i­cally altered crops, has devel­oped resis­tance in 12 major U.S. weeds. That means that RoundUp Ultra will not kill most of the most per­ni­cious weeds on mil­lions of acres of com­mod­ity crop­land. Chemical com­pa­nies have responded by rec­om­mend­ing that farm­ers use 2,4-D (a major ingre­di­ent in Agent Orange), Paraquat, and arsenic com­pounds on weeds that RoundUp will no longer kill. All of these replace­ment chem­i­cals have been proven to be onco­genic (cause can­cer) in test ani­mals by the California EPA. To deal with this resis­tance prob­lem, the genetic engi­neer­ing firms are now insert­ing genes resis­tant to 2,4-D into corn and soy crops.

The promise of dra­mat­i­cally increased yields has also not been real­ized for GMO crops. All of the four major GMO crops have shown yield drags in the U.S. and total yield fail­ures around the world (espe­cially in India). Charles Benbrook stud­ied yields in the U.S. and his research showed sig­nif­i­cantly lower yields in GMO soy. More recent stud­ies have shown yield drags in cot­ton, soy, canola and no increase for corn. Since costs are higher for GMO seeds than con­ven­tional seeds, any loss of yield is dou­bly costly. 4

And just to make things a lit­tle more try­ing for farm­ers, we’re now find­ing that GMO corn and cot­ton plants are so tough they punc­ture trac­tor tires. Amusing to some, maybe, but to farm­ers who have to main­tain expen­sive equip­ment, this is no laugh­ing mat­ter. Tractor tires are very expen­sive, but we count on them to last for five or six years on large-scale farms. On GMO farms grow­ing corn or cot­ton, they are last­ing for only one or two years. To replace the eight tires on a 200 horse­power John Deere costs $30,000. One tire man­u­fac­turer is exper­i­ment­ing with Kevlar-lined tires. How much are these armored tires going to cost?

Let’s be clear. Whether you’re a farmer in California or Vermont, or India or Brazil, GMO crops are noth­ing but trou­ble. Factor in the cost to the envi­ron­ment, and the cost—and pain—to con­sumers in related health­care expenses, GMO crops are a dis­as­ter. Propaganda aside.

Will Allen

Will Allen, co-manager of Cedar Circle Farm in Vermont, has many years of involve­ment in the field of sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture. He was one of the pio­neers of organic farm­ing in California and helped start the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gram through the California Certified Organic Farmers Organization.